Now Crespi’s Opponents Are Feeling Hurt

If the Crespi High football team only had a few more injuries, the Celts might really be good. Sounds funny, but two of the Celts’ most significant impairments this season helped the team become stronger in the end.

First, receiver Wayne Emerson suffered a foot injury in the preseason. To replace him, Coach Tim Lins moved tight end Mike Glendenning to wide receiver and running back Deron McElroy to tight end. McElroy caught four passes for 136 yards last week against San Clemente as the Celts advanced to the Southern Section Division I semifinals.

McElroy’s move out of the backfield also left more carries for tailback Shaun Williams, who has rushed for 1,749 yards and scored 23 touchdowns and was named the Del Rey League’s most valuable player.

The second injury was, ironically, a pinched nerve in McElroy’s neck. Though not serious, it did keep McElroy out of a couple of games early in the season, just enough for Mark Herz to replace him as the kicker. McElroy had missed two of his first three extra points and didn’t have much range on field goals. Since taking over, Herz has made 24 of 25 extra-point attempts and five of seven field-goal tries, including a 26-yarder to beat San Clemente in a tiebreaker.

EAST VALLEY LEAGUE

The Master Plan

Three games into the season and already the North Hollywood basketball team has lost as many games as it did a year ago.

But it’s all in keeping with the grand plan, according to Coach Steve Miller.

“We’re trying to compete against better teams so we can compete in the playoffs,” said Miller, who entered the Huskies in two out-of-state tournaments. “There are no real answers to why we lost in the playoffs. . . . We can’t dictate who we play in league, but we can outside of the league.”

North Hollywood (1-2), which finished 25-2 last season and 26-1 the season before, hasn’t advanced past the quarterfinals since 1991 when the Huskies were routed by Fremont in the City Section 3-A Division championship game, 70-37.

The Huskies played in Anchorage, Alaska, last week and learned about their weaknesses in front of as many as 4,000 fans during one game, Miller said.

“The competition was tremendous,” Miller said. “We’re not ready for that competition at this stage of our year.”

Nationally ranked East High of Anchorage handed North Hollywood its most embarrassing loss in several seasons. Paced by the play of Duke-bound Trajan Langdon, East routed North Hollywood, 83-55.

But that may not be the last the Huskies see of Langdon and his East teammates. Both schools are entered in a Las Vegas tournament later this month and could meet in the third round. Miller is ready.

“We would love to play them on a neutral court,” he said.

GOLDEN LEAGUE

Hurts So Good

Playing at Antelope Valley? Better buckle the old chin strap.

The Antelopes’ 21-7 upset last week of previously unbeaten Bishop Amat was marked by several big plays and as many big hits.

“We wanted to establish something on our field,” Antelope Valley Coach Brent Newcomb said. “You may have seen the sign we had up, ‘House of Pain.’

“It was a good, clean, hard-hitting football game. I saw that No. 21 (receiver Daylon McCutcheon) and No. 3 (tailback Korey Minor) each left the game for a spell because we were playing good, hard defense.

“We came to hit. I learned a long time ago that to W-I-N you gotta H-I-T.”

Antelope Valley recovered three Bishop Amat fumbles and intercepted three of junior James Free’s passes. Free, a transfer from St. Francis, fumbled twice.

*

Antelope Valley defensive end Caleb Smith was in a world of hurt. He showed his injured right hand to an assistant coach, then re-entered the game against Bishop Amat.

As it turns out, Smith had suffered a fracture at the base of his thumb. Nonetheless, he will play tonight against Mater Dei, even if he does so one-handed.

“It may be my last chance (to play in a game of this magnitude),” said Smith, a 6-foot-3, 215-pound junior. “It’s swollen a little bit, but it’s getting better.”

MISCELLANY

One Size Fits All

Now that City football coaches have finally done away with the Class B exponent system and begun fielding frosh-soph teams, they have set their sights on making another significant change.

According to Kennedy High Coach Bob Francola, a member of the City football advisory committee, coaches have discussed doing away with the current two-division playoff format and moving to one 32-team field.

The City presently fields 16-team brackets in both the 3-A and 4-A divisions. Lobbying for the final postseason berths in the 4-A is often fierce and political.

“We’d love to (change the current format),” Francola said. “Maybe not even have a 3-A championship.

“We’re rewarding mediocrity. We didn’t have the 16 best teams in the (4-A) tournament last year, and we didn’t this year.”

Francola said the advisory committee isn’t expected to meet again until January, when revisions will be discussed further.

Around the Leagues. . . .

* Village Christian junior Ignacio Brache kicked nine field goals, including distances of 40, 42, 49, 53, and 54 yards. Of 31 kickoffs, 24 landed in the end zone.

* Kennedy quarterback Dan McMullen appears poised for a productive senior year. The 6-3 junior passed for 1,481 yards and 14 touchdowns this season.

* When John Greene of Agoura finished sixth in the Division II race of the state cross-country championships, he continued an impressive streak. Agoura has now placed one runner among the top 10 finishers in its division each year since the state meet began in 1987. Bryan Dameworth won three consecutive Division I titles from 1987-89, and Ryan Wilson placed ninth, second and first in the Division II finals from 1990-92.

* Nordhoff’s boys set a Division III team time record of 81 minutes 9 seconds in winning their second state cross-country title in three years. San Marino had held the previous mark (81:54) for team time--the cumulative time of a school’s top five runners.

Staff writers Steve Elling, Jeff Fletcher, Paige A. Leech and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.