Coach gets credit for save
Ed Drzanek is a nationally renowned line coach at Servite, with college and pro football players having benefited from his tutelage.
Now he is a life saver, too.
At one of Orange County's finer steakhouses Thursday, a man in Drzanek's party was choking on a chunk of shrimp. Drzanek grabbed the man from behind, positioned himself to perform the Heimlich maneuver, and after three hard tugs, the shrimp was purged from the man's throat.
"I finally got to use my training," Drzanek said, smiling.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
•The nominees for the North roster for the Orange County North-South Prep All-Star Football Game were released last week. As usual, included were the names of big stars very unlikely to play, including USC signees Aaron Corp (whom I spotted at opening day at Angel Stadium on Monday night) and Mike Reardon of Orange Lutheran, and Chris Galippo of Servite. Even though such players won't play, it would be ridiculous not to include them on a list of nominees for the game (which is July 13 at Orange Coast College).
•Aaron Corp was named High School Male Athlete of the Year last week at the 710 ESPN Southern California Sports Awards at the ESPN Zone at Downtown Disney. Lutheran's football team was named High School Team of the Year.
•Lutheran's football team has an opening for a nonleague opponent this fall, for either Week 1 or Week 5 (the schedule is flexible, because the Lancers are playing a Week 0 game against Dana Hills). There are a couple of "we get no respect" teams in the county we would love to see fill that Lutheran nonleague opening.
•You might notice that the scheduling of high school events is different this week. For example, baseball usually goes with a Wednesday-Friday schedule in most leagues. Because of Good Friday falling this Friday, most baseball leagues are Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday this week.
•Wonder who holds which records in county track and field, or where a current athlete ranks on the all-time lists? Go to flashresults.com/flashwest/ and scroll down to "Orange County (CA) High School All-Time Track & Field Marks." The list is updated through last season's state meet.
•Santa Ana baseball's optimism for a special season is getting clouded by injuries. Returning all-league shortstop Eric Torresto has had a shoulder surgery and is out for the season, and replacement Jordan Sanchez had an emergency appendectomy this past weekend. Sanchez is one of several kids who were coached long ago by yours truly, but despite that still made it on a varsity roster in various sports.
•If the retirement of Karen Hellyer as an assistant commissioner at the CIF-SS office means that the section will hire another woman to the same or a similar position, the county has several excellent woman leaders who should be considered if they are interested. Among them: Janet Berardi, girls athletic director at Kennedy; and Sharen Caperton, girls AD at Brea. Both have held CIF-SS executive committee posts in recent years.
•Reports are unanimous that Brea Olinda's girls basketball team was involved in an unusually physical contest when the Ladycats lost to Archbishop Mitty of San Jose in the CIF State Division II girls basketball championship game in Sacramento. When the officials either call the game closely or let the rough stuff go, that sometimes plays to the advantages of one team.
•It is likely that Drew Viney will be on the North roster when players for the Orange County All-Star Basketball Games are announced in the next day or two. Viney, All-County first-team as a junior and an Oregon signee, was cut from the Villa Park team late in the regular season because of what Villa Park coach Kevin Reynolds saw as Viney's incompatibility with team structure. Viney was not an All-County selection this season.
•Sad news: Bill Frantz, who coached Orange to its most-recent CIF-Southern Section basketball championship in 1958, passed away last month.
•Mater Dei's boys basketball team finished No. 13 in studentsports.com's final national rankings.
•And our friends at Fox Sports did send a DVD copy of the Mater Dei-Mitty boys basketball game, so we could see for ourselves whether a shot by Mater Dei's Taylor King actually did go in, as the officials ruled. Alas, the disc did not work in the DVD player or the computer ("disk error" according to the display, so we will try again). Of course what happened — or did not happen — should not taint Mater Dei's victory … but it might be important to some hotshot grade-school basketball player who, several years from now, in his final high school game, might be two points from catching King's all-time county career scoring record.
[More at www.ocregister.com ]
Other Sports News:
Brandon Rush,
Glen Davis,
Jarvaris Critten,
John David Booty,
Michael Goodnight,
Terrelle Pryor,
Daequan Cook,
Xavier Henry,
Jimmy Clausen,
Kevin Durant,
Ronald Steel,
Ty Lawson,
Dashonte Riley,
