Milestone victory nearly within reach for coach

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:

•There is a chance that next season Los Alamitos football coach John Barnes, who turned 62 over the weekend but looks 42, can be the first county football coach to get 300 career victories. His 285 victories is the county record. Bob Johnson of Mission Viejo is next, at 249, followed by Valencia's Mike Marrujo at 244.

•Two other active county football coaches have more than 200 victories: Bruce Rollinson of Mater Dei, 211; and Jeff Brinkley of Newport Harbor, 206. Closing in on 200: Edison's Dave White, at 179; and Orange Lutheran's Jim Kunau, at 173.

•One county football player is among the top 35 rushing and receiving leaders: Cody Johnson of Pacifica. He is 16th in county rushing, with 777 yards. His 24 receptions have him among the top 35 players in that category.

•Chris Paul, Laguna Beach's senior All-CIF receiver who separated his shoulder in the Breakers' football game last week against Calvary Chapel, also is an outstanding baseball player. Paul was All-CIF in baseball, too, last school year when he batted .484 with eight home runs and 30 RBIs. He also struck out 59 batters in 42 innings and posted a 2.15 ERA.

•The Fountain Valley-Edison football game – the Battle of the Bell – is at Cerritos College on Nov. 5. Usually, the Bell game is at Orange Coast College but Orange Lutheran was quicker at securing OCC that night for its home game against St. John Bosco of Bellflower. Edison leads the series, 27-14-1.

•Mission Viejo has a 10-game football unbeaten streak against San Clemente; those teams play each other Friday at San Clemente. There was a 31-31 tie during the streak, in 2007. It might not be a coincidence that the most recent time San Clemente beat Mission Viejo, 1999, was Johnson's first year as the Diablos coach.

•Mater Dei-Servite is the longest uninterrupted series currently in county football. They continued to play each other even when they were not in the same leagues, like in the 1990s when Mater Dei was in the South Coast League and Servite was in the Sunset and then the Golden West leagues.

•To honor an e-mailed request to publish who leads the series – Mater Dei 34 victories, Servite 13 victories, 2 ties. It might be a good guess that the request came from a Mater Dei alum.

•Servite coach Troy Thomas was unsure if junior starting running back Sean DeRosa will be available to play against Mater Dei, because of an ankle injury to DeRosa that occurred Friday against St. John Bosco. Malik Felton, a senior, replaced DeRosa and rushed for 196 yards and two touchdowns. DeRosa is more of a between-the-tackles runner, while Felton is more of the outside style of back – and Mater Dei probably has to spend the week preparing its defense for both.

•St. John Bosco will be the third-place team in Trinity League football. Bosco will beat Santa Margarita this week, Orange Lutheran next week and then JSerra the following week, which is the final week of the regular season. There are no at-large berths in the playoffs division in which the Trinity League belongs, the Pac-5 Division, so the No. 4 team in the Trinity will not go to the playoffs.

•It is disappointing that the .500-or-better overall record criteria for being eligible for a football playoff at-large berth did not get eliminated at last week's CIF-Southern Section Council meeting. But the timing of any playoff-rules change is bad right now, as the CIF-Southern Section is in the first year of a four-year period in which leagues are in their current structures. Some teams play not-so-challenging nonleague schedules to ensure they get to the .500 overall level, while there often is a 4-6 team that played a tougher nonleague schedule and is most deserving of an at-large berth.

•Winter sports season is less than a month away. Practices begin Nov. 22 in the sports of boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, girls water polo and wrestling. First contests are Nov. 26 in wrestling, Nov. 29 in the other winter sports. Coaches of winter sports teams should click here to download a survey to submit to have their teams' information included in previews.

•The CIF-Southern Section emphasizes to schools that a transfer hardship waiver request must include paperwork that supports the hardship claim. A financial hardship claim needs documents proving financial difficulty must be included, a student-safety hardship claim must include a letter from the former school's principal that the school was unsafe for the student, and a change-in-guardianship claim must include court documents and address information showing why the student had to change guardianship. Getting a principal to sign off that the school at which he is in charge is an unsafe environment might be a challenge.