Katella High School

A four-run rally in the sixth inning Wednesday helped Katella High School remain unbeaten in the Empire League and gain its 11th win in its last 12 games with a 6-5 victory over Los Alamitos on Blair Field at Long Beach. The Knights, 5-0 in league play and 11-3 overall, collected 12 hits as all but one starter earned at least one hit. Third baseman Osmar DeChavez, the ninth hitter in the order, got the the biggest hit of all with a line single to center that scored two runs in the sixth.

Kevin Carlson of Katella High School had just missed on his first attempt at 7 feet Saturday night at the CIF state track and field championships, when a diminutive girl rounding the Cerritos College track caught his attention. Carlson's teammate, Martha Pinto, was heading down the homestretch en route to a surprising second-place finish in the girls' 3,200 meters. Seconds after Pinto finished in a career-best 10 minutes 42.

Maximum class size of 12 students . . . class officers who organize strong activities . . . a 4-H club . . . Friday activities that attract the entire student body. . . . The stuff of any public school administrator's dream. But at Jordan Secondary Learning Center in Garden Grove, this dream is a reality. "The school itself is not different," said Bill Langan, Jordan Center principal. "It's different in the clients we're working with."

They saw it coming from his first days in Little League. But as former coaches, teammates and teachers watched Jaret Wright on big-screen television Wednesday night, they couldn't believe it had happened so soon. After all, only four years ago, Wright was playing ball for Katella High School in Anaheim. The kid was just 21. And here he was on the pitcher's mound . . . at the World Series.

State officials said Monday they will try to revoke the liquor license of an Anaheim market that investigators say sold beer to high school students before a desert crash that took four lives. The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control also will seek misdemeanor charges against the owner of Me-N-Paul's Market and a clerk who allegedly sold seven six-packs of beer to three teen-agers with the group the night before the July 29 crash near Victorville.

Senior Armando Orizaba set the Katella High School single-season record for goals as the Knights defeated Loara, 3-1, in an Empire League boys' soccer match Friday at Katella. Orizaba had two goals to increase his season total to 18, surpassing the mark of 16 he set last season. Orizaba's first goal came with five seconds left in the first half to give Katella a 1-0 lead. His two goals give him four in two league games.

As a kaleidoscope of at least 1.1 million balloons began their upward journey Thursday, Emily Parenteau panicked slightly when her allotment of 1,000 helium balloons stubbornly refused to move. Emily, 14, clawed, ripped and tore at the plastic tube holding her balloons as she and 2,300 other mostly shrieking young people became part of a new world record. "It's exciting," said Emily, a Katella High School student. "When you have kids, you can say, 'Yeah, I did it.'

Dareck Crane made a couple of moves, one off the court and one on, that have increased his basketball fortunes greatly this season. Crane, a 6-foot 3-inch sophomore at Orange Coast College, moved from off guard to point guard a few games into the season. He also moved from Compton, where he grew up, to Costa Mesa to be closer to school. "I knew it would be asking a lot of him," OCC Coach Tandy Gillis said about Crane's move to point guard. "But he's doing a lot.

No one is talking anymore about having Anaheim high school students jump to their feet in respect whenever an adult enters the room. But while the quirky proposal has died, it also has given birth to a thought-provoking community discussion about the importance of respect shown by and toward teenagers--and what the schools' role in promoting it should be.

The term is "homered," and in basketball vernacular, it is loosely defined as the home team getting the benefit of the doubt from the officials. Depending on who's doing the talking, it either didn't apply to Katella High School's 60-57 win over Kennedy Friday night in the Knights' gym, or it made the difference.