Cleveland’s Young Granted Fifth Year of Eligibility

Nick Young, an All-City Section basketball player at Reseda Cleveland High, has been granted a fifth year of athletic eligibility, clearing the way for him to play this season.

Twice the section rejected Young’s appeal, but the third attempt succeeded, Cleveland Coach Andre Chevalier said. Young sought a hardship waiver for an additional year because he had fallen behind in school for family reasons when he was a freshman and sophomore.

Young, a 6-foot-7 senior, has already committed to USC. “This is what he wanted the whole time,” Chevalier said.

-- Eric Sondheimer

Jim Clendaniel, the cross-country and track and field coach at Yucaipa High since 1983, plans to resign from those positions at the end of the upcoming cross-country season because of budget cuts that have reduced the number of assistant coaches at the school.

Clendaniel, who guided the Yucaipa girls’ cross-country team to state Division II titles in 1995 and ’96 and to the Division I championship in 1997, learned last week that he would have no paid assistants under his supervision during cross-country season and only one assistant during track season.

Yucaipa had paid stipends for 1 1/2 coaches in cross-country and for 3 1/2 coaches in track, including Clendaniel, the previous 10 years.

“I take pride in my programs and I don’t want to do it half-heartedly,” Clendaniel said. “We typically have 120-140 kids in our track program and there’s no way two coaches can work effectively with that many kids.”

The Yucaipa girls tied for the mythical national championship in cross-country in 1997 and won four consecutive Southern Section titles from 1994 to ’97. In addition, the boys’ team won the section’s Division II championship in 1995.

Hesperia Sultana, the defending state Division II girls’ cross-country champion, is third in Harrier magazine’s national preseason rankings.

Los Alamos, N.M., second in the final rankings last year, is first, followed by three-time defending champion Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Ventura, second to Sultana in the state Division II final last year, is ranked 16th.

-- John Ortega