Orange County Athletics

The U.S. Olympic Festival this week at Oklahoma City will provide different opportunities for the 75 or so Orange County athletes who will participate. For athletes such as 1988 Olympic shotputters Jim Doehring and Bonnie Dasse and Peter Campbell, a two-time Olympic water polo player, the Olympic Festival represents a chance to get together with friends--and rivals--while competing largely free of high stakes and pressure.

This is so right. Orange County Grizzlies. Or Smoothies. Or Surfies. Or whatever you want to call our maybe soon-to-be NBA team. With sports today it usually doesn't happen this way. The right time, the right arena, the right team--right team being any team with a negative checkbook balance, an antsy owner and a moving van parked outside. But when the Vancouver Grizzlies' owner, Michael Heisley, came real estate shopping Tuesday in Anaheim, he should have noticed something.

Volleyball player Misty May, swimmers Aaron Peirsol and Kaitlin Sandeno and diver Erica Sorgi and her coach, Hongping Li, are among the many Orange County athletes in Winnipeg, Canada, for the Pan American Games, which begin today and continue through Aug. 8. May, a graduate of Newport Harbor High, was named college volleyball player of the year for the second time this spring after leading Long Beach State to a 36-0 season.

This is so right. Orange County Grizzlies. Or Smoothies. Or Surfies. Or whatever you want to call our maybe soon-to-be NBA team. With sports today it usually doesn't happen this way. The right time, the right arena, the right team--right team being anyone with a negative checkbook balance, an antsy owner and a moving van parked outside. But when the Vancouver Grizzlies' owner, Michael Heisley, comes real estate shopping today in Anaheim, he should pay attention.

Tom Lewis was the scoring sensation and Rich Branning was a point guard extraordinaire. LeRon Ellis was the graceful center, and Wayne Carlander was a powerful blue-collar forward. Matt Beeuwsaert was the ultimate team player, and Mark Wulfemeyer was a legend. For the past 20 years, some of the Southern Section's most talented basketball players have gained fame, notoriety and scholarships to some of the nation's top major colleges while playing for Orange County high schools.

FOOTBALL ANGELUS First Team Offense: WR--Tino Chavez, Mater Dei; Steve Corpus, St. Paul; Mike Kroll, Servite. TE--Jason Green, Bishop Amat. Line--Robert Cena and Chris Garcia, St. Paul; Ryan Motherway and Jay Shinnefield, Mater Dei; Joe Patterson, Bishop Amat. QB--Danny O'Neil, Mater Dei; Zack Zertuche, Bishop Amat. RB--Kealii Clifford, Mater Dei; Marvin Negrete, Bishop Montgomery; Kent Weiss, Servite. K--Eric White, Bishop Amat.

It sounds--abstractly, at least--like a prescription for utter chaos: A pack of six or eight mostly fearless riders doggedly spurring their fast, agile mounts inside a ring at ferocious gallops, windmilling away at a bouncing ball with what look like elongated 3-woods. Horses frothing, nostrils flaring, sweat flying everywhere. But, say those enthusiasts who spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars pursuing what they call this most addictive of sports, polo is a fine madness.

It is a strange mix of players running through drills at a recent tryout for the Orange County Rhinos, one of three semi-professional football teams in Orange County. "Some of these guys have never played high school ball," Rhinos' co-owner/defensive coach Carl Babb said as he watched them go through drills at Brookhurst Park in Anaheim. "And if you get into it with them, you'll find that some who have (played in high school) never got on the field. But there's nothing here we can't work with."

At the tender age of 13, Tanya Carr felt burned out and washed up as a gymnast. "I got tired of practicing for 24 hours a week," she said. "I wanted to have a life." Carr also felt buried in the gymnastic hierarchy, too old even as a teen-ager to have a decent shot at achieving national ranking. So she quit gymnastics and turned to power tumbling.

Joe DiMaggio played there with the Santa Ana Air Base team during World War II. Connie Mack brought his Philadelphia Athletics there for spring training in 1940. Mack later told The Sporting News it was the best spring training site he had used in 50 years in baseball. The St. Louis Browns trained there in 1946. Many of the stars of the Pacific Coast League in the late 1930s and '40s played there during spring training, including Johnny Vander Meer, who pitched consecutive no-hitters for the Cincinnati Reds in 1938.

Only two weeks removed from a retirement party marking the end of an improbable and often brilliant professional soccer career, Thomas Dooley is beginning the next phase of his life in Orange County. "I've had great success playing soccer, but everything I've done before is history," said Dooley, a former U.S. national team captain who played professionally for 16 years in his native Germany and four years in Major League Soccer with Columbus and New York/New Jersey. "I'm starting from zero."

Chances are the ABA isn't coming to Orange County. Thank goodness. The people who were pouring into the Pond Tuesday night by the ones and twos and sometimes even in huge groups of three to see the most famous basketball team in the world, had two questions about the ABA. What is it? And why would we want it? Answer No. 1 is easy. It is a minor-league attempt to bring an alleged version of pro basketball to arenas with empty dates in January. Answer No. 2 is easy also. We don't.

The 10 or so players representing Orange County at Saturday's Southern California Ultimate disc competition admit they aren't exactly the stuff of champions. Some players could easily lose a few pounds. Several have never entered formal competitions of a sport players describe as a cross between soccer and football--with a Frisbee, or disc, as Ultimate players call it. Others haven't seen competitive play in years. They don't even have a team captain.

It was the morning after, just before noon. Peter Vidmar sat alone outside his apartment in West Los Angeles. He had boosted himself up onto a cement planter. His legs dangled as he waited for his wife, Donna, to return from work and ferry him across town, back to the Olympic Village and the other athletes. It was 1984, the summer of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. But the traffic wasn't so terrible, and Vidmar wasn't at all concerned that he had to wait.

Twelve years after listening to the radio as Jesse Owens won four track and field gold medals and smashed Adolf Hitler's theory of Aryan supremacy at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, diver Sammy Lee won a gold and a bronze of his own in London. As a child, swimmer Bruce Furniss entertained his parents with an imitation of TV announcer Keith Jackson introducing the field in an Olympic final. All grown up by 1976, Furniss won two gold medals in Montreal.

Amanda Beard slipped quietly back to Tucson. Aaron Peirsol, Gabrielle Rose, Jason Lezak and Staciana Stitts received a hero's welcome at John Wayne Airport. Chad Carvin finally came home, after lingering at the U.S. Olympic swim trials as long as possible. After nearly two weeks of intense competition in Indianapolis, members of U.S. team returned to neutral corners. They will have two days to revel in making the team.

Jason Peters swung his 94-pound female partner over his head and onto his shoulders with one graceful, seamless effort, then held her as she hooked one small foot around his arm and extended the other into a perfect point. All this while riding a fast-moving, crashing wave onto shore. "It felt incredible," Peters said of the perfect tandem surfing lift, the "arrow," that he and partner Mel Ferrer completed Sunday at the U.S. Team Trials at the San Onofre State Beach.

The way David Thurmond sees it, Australian Rules Football is no more violent or gruesome than basketball, soccer, hockey or American football. Thurmond, president of the Orange County Bombers Australian Rules Football Club, says television promotions gave the sport a bad rap by showing the most violent collisions. "Everyone saw all these highlights with people getting crushed," Thurmond said. "They see all that destruction and would be like 'Man, that is brutal.'

Chris Kluwe, Tia Bollinger and Giuliana Mendiola all belong in the Southern Section record book, but whether they actually get there depends on their schools. They are among the high school athletes who should be included--but could be excluded--in the next edition of the All-Sports Press Guide and Record Book unless schools notify the section office before the end of the month.