Hart Passes on Duel With Granada Hills

It would have been a treat for Valley-area high school football fans. It would have been an exciting match-up between Southern and City Section powers: Hart and Granada Hills squaring off next season in a nonleague game.

But it won’t be.

Hart Coach Mike Herrington, who is soliciting opponents to complete his school’s nonleague schedule this fall, has declined an offer to play Granada Hills, the defending North Valley League champion.

Apparently the Highlanders, who were 10-1 last season and posted a City 4-A Division title in 1987, are too tough to tackle.

“Our next year’s team is not going to be very good,” Herrington said. “We have a young team and we don’t want to start off 0-3. It will be a couple of years before we can compete with them.”

Granada Hills, upset by El Camino Real in its playoff opener last season, will have the services of quarterback Bryan Martin and running back-linebacker Brett Washington, The Times’ All-Valley Lineman of the Year.

Several key players on Hart’s Foothill League championship team last fall were seniors, including multitalented tailback Howard Blackwell, who has orally committed to Oregon, and quarterback Rob Westervelt, who passed for 2,064 yards and 24 touchdowns.

Hart was 10-2 and reached the second round of the Division III playoffs but Herrington said that only two starters are expected to return. Complicating matters, the coach added, is the fact that City Section teams do not field freshman teams, leaving Hart’s lower-level squad without an opponent if a game were scheduled.

“It’s not good scheduling when you have to do something like that,” Herrington said.

Add Hart: Hart’s nonleague schedule includes the traditional opener against rival Canyon, followed by an open date, then a home game against Crespi.

Canyon and Crespi are expected to open the season as part of a high school tripleheader in Hawaii in August, although final details, including formal approval from the Southern Section, remain unsettled. Herrington said it is “very upsetting” that Canyon and Crespi might have a head start on Hart.

“I’m kind of miffed at that,” Herrington said. “It’s going to make the Hart-Canyon game--the kickoff for the Santa Clarita Valley, basically--a nothing game. They’re going to know what they have.”

Will Canyon really hold a decided edge over Hart based on a nonleague exhibition halfway across the Pacific Ocean--where the Cowboys and Coach Harry Welch are likely to encounter several festive distractions?

Herrington believes so.

“(Canyon’s) players are in for a big surprise,” he said. “They think they’re going over there to hit the beach. Harry will have them doing three-a-days.”

Tournament setback: San Fernando’s powerhouse boys’ soccer team, which has forfeited 10 wins and two ties because it used an ineligible player, also must surrender the Hart tournament championship it won in December.

San Fernando must give back the tournament trophy but will be allowed to keep its four all-tournament selections, Hart Coach Robert Benavidez said.

“I don’t think we’re going to get that technical with them,” he said. “The team trophy is all I care about right now.”

Camarillo, which lost to San Fernando, 1-0, in the tournament finale, will inherit the championship trophy. Hart and Newbury Park also will move up a notch to second and third places, respectively.

San Fernando was forced to forfeit because it was learned that goalkeeper Tony Olivares had entered his ninth semester of high school, a violation of interscholastic rules.

Broken Spirits: A trophy case and two glass backboards were broken when the Paraclete High gymnasium was vandalized Saturday night.

In addition, the walls and a carpet rolled over the Spirits’ gym floor were pelted with eggs, and a board bearing the names of the varsity basketball players was torn from the wall, according to Principal William Caffrey.

Caffrey said damage was estimated at $5,000 and that there are no suspects or motives.

The vandalism prompted the school to move the final boys’ and girls’ regular-season basketball home games--Feb. 2 against Bishop--to Antelope Valley College.

“The girls were really in the driver’s seat for winning the league and they’re really suffering,” Caffrey said. “It’s just the frustration that goes with it.”

Hard times: Newbury Park High’s Kevin Loveall was suspended from a Marmonte League game last Wednesday for the second time this season, but two days later the 6-foot-8 senior responded with his best game of the season.

Loveall, who sat out last Wednesday’s 85-77 loss to Royal for reasons Coach Greg Ropes refused to specify, came back with season-highs of 27 points and 17 rebounds in a 77-66 win over against Channel Islands on Friday. He hit 11 of 15 field-goal attempts and five of six free throws.

Loveall also was suspended for attempting to punch Westlake’s Matt Weaver after a 67-62 loss Jan. 8 at Newbury Park. Loveall was suspended from school for three days--he missed a game against Simi Valley--and was ordered to sit out a 66-46 loss to Westlake on Monday.

Tough break: Scott Tillman, a Glendale starter who broke his thumb during warm-ups in December, quit the basketball team last week. He had not played since sustaining the injury.

“He had that cast on a long time,” Coach Bob Davidson said. “You can’t sit out four weeks in the middle of the season and come back like nothing happened.”

Mike Glaze and staff writers Sam Farmer, Vince Kowalick and Jeff Riley contributed to this notebook.