O.C. school still without football coach

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:

•The search for a new football coach at La Quinta has halted, and school athletic director Ron Vander Sluis does not know when it will begin again. He said a walk-on coach, which is a coach who is not a full-time faculty member, was the first choice but that got nowhere and it remains uncertain if a teaching position can be attached to the coaching job. "We're back at square one," said Vander Sluis to describe the situation that no football program should be in, in late May.

•Orange Lutheran will play Pickerington Central of Ohio in the Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Football Series on Aug. 30, part of a two-day, four-game event at Ohio Stadium in Columbus. Pickerington Central was 13-1 last year when it reached the state Division I semifinals, and Orange Lutheran was 10-3 and lost to Tesoro in the CIF-SS Division I semifinals. The Pickerington Central-OLu game will be televised live by ESPNU.

•Washington is the latest school to offer a scholarship to La Habra football player Josh Quezada, who was an All-County first-team running back as a junior last year but could have been a selection on the All-County defensive team, too. I was never sure if Quezada was a linebacker or safety last year, because he's so quick it was difficult to tell where his point of origin was on the field. Safety might be his collegiate destination.

•The appointment of Frank Talarico as first president at JSerra moves him away from Servite, his alma mater where he was vice president of advance for several years, a position that sometimes required him to write press releases. Still at the Servite Web site under "press releases" can be found the Talarico-composed release of Feb. 22, 2005, that announces pointedly and entertainingly the decision of John Barnes to remain at Los Alamitos instead of taking the Servite football coaching position that Barnes had accepted earlier that day: "After signing his contract, meeting with the faculty and staff of Servite High School, taking a tour of the campus with his wife and son Jimmy, and spending thirty minutes with his future football team mapping out his strategy and philosophy, John Barnes has decided he is unable to accept the position of head football coach for Servite High School."

•Of course, the Servite-Barnes story had a happy ending for all. Barnes remained at Los Alamitos, where he is content and consistently expanding his county-record victories total, and Troy Thomas went to Servite, which has undergone a football revival. In the years since, Los Alamitos is 31-12 overall and 0-3 in the playoffs, and Servite is 34-14 overall and 5-4 in the playoffs.

•The Register/ocvarsity.com baseball preseason top 10: 1. El Toro; 2. Mater Dei; 3. Capistrano Valley; 4. Los Alamitos; 5. Marina; 6. Dana Hills; 7. JSerra; 8. Orange Lutheran; 9. Tesoro; 10. Edison. The final media poll top 10: 1. El Toro; 2. JSerra; 3. Edison; 4. Mater Dei; 5. Capistrano Valley; 6. Marina; 7. Tesoro; 8. Foothill; 9. Esperanza; 10. Pacifica. Dana Hills and Orange Lutheran are in the second round of the Division I playoffs, but we really missed on Los Alamitos, which had a lot of new players at key positions and finished fourth in the Sunset League.

•The Register/ocvarsity.com softball preseason top 10: 1. Canyon; 2. Mater Dei; 3. Marina; 4. Trabuco Hills; 5. Rosary; 6. Los Alamitos; 7. Beckman; 8. Esperanza; 9. El Modena; 10. El Toro. The final regular-season top 10: 1. Mater Dei; 2. Canyon; 3. El Modena; 4. Edison; 5. Los Alamitos; 6. Marina; 7. Beckman; 8. Foothill; 9. Laguna Hills; 10. Aliso Niguel. Not too bad, either. Rosary did finish second in the Trinity League, and Esperanza played in a Division I second-round game Tuesday.

•Seeding and final league standing have nothing to do with the selection of home teams in the playoffs after the first round. Following a rule proposed and approved by CIF-SS member schools, when two teams meet in the playoffs after the first round the team with the fewest number of home games to that point of the playoffs is the home team. If they have had an equal number of home playoff games, a coin flip determines the home team.

•We need all-league teams from every spring sport. Those are crucial for us in our All-County selections, and we want to publish them in print and at ocvarsity.com. Send them to preps@ocregister.com and, for baseball, also to sfryer@ocregister.com.

•The top nine finishers in each event at last week's CIF-SS track and field championships, regardless of division, advance to the Masters Meet, except for the 800, 1,600, 3,200 and all field events in which the top 12 finishers go to the Masters. The top five finishers in each Masters event advance to the CIF State Championships which are June 5 and 6 at Buchanan High in Clovis.

•The CIF-Southern Section Masters Meet, the qualifying meet for the CIF State Championships, is Friday at Cerritos College. The stadium opens at 3:30 p.m., field events begin with the girls discus and boys shot put at 4:30 p.m., and running events begin at 6 p.m. Ticket prices for the Masters Meet: $8 for adults, $5 for children 13 and younger and for high school students with valid student identification.

•The Orange County North-South All-Star Football Game will have its recognition dinner Thursday at the Brea Community Center. The game, to be played July 10 at Orange Coast College, is in its 50th year so it is appropriate that the dinner's guest speakers are the 1959 game's coaches, Dick Tucker of Brea Olinda, who coached the North in that first game, and Dick Coury of Mater Dei, who coached the South.

•The Brea Lions Club, which organizes and manages the game for charity, still is searching for players from that 1959 game so they can be honored at this year's game. Contact James Schweitzer at 714-529-0635 for information.

•The Orange County All-Star Baseball Game is June 6 at Glover Stadium. Often, the All-Star game follows the MLB draft, but this year the draft, June 9-11, follows the game. Capistrano Valley's Tyler Matzek and El Toro's Chad Thompson, both pitchers, are projected to be early selections, although Thompson, CIF-SS Division II player of the year in '08, had arm surgery recently.

Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com