2013 Steve Fryer Archive Stories

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •It would be better if it had the added intensity of being a league match, but this will have to do. The top two ranked county boys soccer teams play each other Friday when No. 1 San Clemente plays at No. 2 El Toro at 3:30 p.m. El Toro and San Clemente are in that 10-sch

Touring the sports world, here and there ... People who are freaking out about the possibility that Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III will have to undergo a second knee reconstruction procedure should know about Stanford basketball player Andy Brown. Brown tore the ACL in his left knee his senior year at Mater De

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •The Servite-De La Salle of Concord football game is on. Servite will play De La Salle, the mega-program in Northern California that is the reigning CIF State Open Division champion, on Oct. 5 at an Orange County site to be determined, Servite coach Troy Thomas confirmed. Servit

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •It's Five Counties weekend. The gigantic wrestling tournament, pretty much a preview of the CIF-Southern Section Championships, is today and Saturday at Fountain Valley High. After today's preliminary action is held on 11 mats, Saturday starts with the championship quarterfinal

Touring the sports world, here and there ... The Lakers' offensive problem is simple. They start their half-court sets by having a big guy, either Pau Gasol or

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •Tustin has selected its football coach and, if published reports are correct, the Tillers got a good one. Tustin athletic director Myron Miller would neither confirm nor deny that it will be Greg Gano, who was at Damien of La Verne the past four seasons and who coached Los Alto

Touring the sports world, here and there ... •The sports books in Las Vegas offer hundreds of proposition betting opportunities every Super Bowl. The crazier ones this week: will any Baltimore or San Francisco player be arrested before the game; will Beyonce's hair be curly/crimped or straight at the beginning of the halftime show;

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •County schools are in discussion about potential league reconfigurations that would be in place starting with the 2014-15 school year. There is talk of adding Foothill and perhaps another school to the Coast View Conference that now includes 10 south-county public schools.

A look at Orange County boys basketball: •It is the final week of the regular season, with league championships and playoff berths at stake. CIF-Southern Section playoff brackets, seedings and first-round pairings will be available as they are released Sunday at ocvarsity.com. •Pairings day begins with the CIF-SS office

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •The basketball team that gets the worst deal in the CIF-Southern Section's method of creating playoff divisions is the Laguna Beach boys team. The Breakers are where they belong, in Division 4AA, enrollment-wise. Because of the enrollment ceiling that keeps even season-after-se

A look at Orange County boys basketball: •San Clemente coach Marc Popovich played at San Clemente and so did a couple of his assistant coaches, making it a special moment for them Thursday when the Tritons beat Trabuco Hills to win the Sea View League championship, the school's first in the sport since 1975. "We talked about that wi

Touring the sports world, here and there ... • The Angels will audition public-address announcers during their first several Cactus League games as the ballclub finds a replacement for David Courtney, who passed away in November. Courtney had been the Angels' PA guy for 18 seasons. Angels vice-president Tim Mead indicated there coul

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •It's releaguing season. County schools had their meeting Wednesday to configure leagues for a four-year period that begins with the 2014-15 school year. Western wants out of the Empire League and the Pacific Coast League would like Corona del Mar to be affiliated elsewhere, but

Touring the sports world, here and there ... That new ticket pricing system for Angels games is going to make sense when we all get used to it. It is based upon the simple market concept of supply and demand. Looking at the first two Angels home games, April 9 and 10 against Oakland, provides a good example. People think they abs

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •Take a look up and down at this week's schedule for CIF-Southern Section girls basketball championship games and you will see that no Orange County team is playing. The last time that happened was ... never. •The first CIF-SS girls basketball championship game was

A look at Orange County boys basketball ... •Villa Park coach Kevin Reynolds has reviewed game video and concluded that a missed free throw was scored as made for J.W. North of Riverside in the first quarter of what would become Villa Park's one-point loss in the CIF-SS Division 2AA championship game Saturday. Said Reynolds i

•The Angels are underpaying Mike Trout and not playing him at his best position. What else can they do to make their most popular player unhappy? Charge him to park at Angel Stadium? •Trout's $510,000 salary this season represents approximately 0.35 percent of the Angels' salaries for 2013. Vernon Wells' $24.6 million salary is

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •The younger guys have asserted themselves already for University swimming. Sophomore Daniel Tran won the 100 backstroke and sophomore Matthew Wong won the 100 breaststroke against Tesoro on Tuesday. This team has plenty of that all-important ingredient — dep

Touring the sports world, here and there ... •Ryan Leaf's horrid, expensive and brief tenure with the San Diego Chargers handicapped the team for a few years. Well, departed General Manager A.J. Smith's crazy dispensing of big contracts to underachievers such as receiver Robert Meacham and tackle Jared Gaither has done similar for t

Touring the sports world, here and there ... •Ryan Leaf's horrid, expensive and brief tenure with the San Diego Chargers handicapped the team for a few years. Well, departed General Manager A.J. Smith's crazy dispensing of big contracts to underachievers such as receiver Robert Meacham and tackle Jared Gaither has done similar for t

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports: •It has been wild week on the coaching front, with two of the county's higher-profile jobs having opened – football at Servite, girls basketball at Brea Olinda. •Ed Drzanek is the first man many people familiar with Servite football thought would be a leading

Touring the sports world, here and there ... •Who is the best hockey player in Southern California? The Kings' Anze Kopitar is the best passer of the group, the Ducks' Corey Perry is the best shooter. His all-around play makes the Ducks' Ryan Getzlaf the best all-around player here. •One has to wonder if the big contrac

Orange County leagues in future years probably will look very much like they do now. Underway is the process to create new league alignments for a period of four school years starting with the 2014-15 school year. Principals from the 73 county high schools in the Orange County Area met Wednesday to review proposals for league configurati

Touring the sports world, here and there ... •One month's worth of spring training is in the books, and we still have no idea how good the Angels' bullpen will be. •Three unsigned relief pitchers: ex-Angel Francisco Rodriguez; ex-Tiger Jose Valverde; and ex-Giant Brian Wilson. •The Angels were 8-17 in sprin

Who knows how they keep it organized, but here it comes. More than 100 schools and 3,100 athletes will compete Friday and Saturday in the Trabuco Hills Distance Carnival and Invitational. In Southern California, only the Arcadia and Mt. SAC track meets are larger in size and prestige. The event, managed by Trabuco Hills' Dennis Kelly and