HS BB: Tommy's coach

Daniel McColl (in black) scores

after RB player (on floor) flops

in unsuccessful attempt to draw

offensive foul. (Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

One of the high points of last season's basketball season for the La Jolla High boys team, besides making it to the CIF title game, was knocking off Grossmont High and Tommy Rutherford, the Hillers' 6'9" star, in a featured evening game of the hosts' own tournament, on their home court last December.

Well, Rutherford's coach, Frank Foggiano, who has welcomed Viking coach Paul Baranowski and his basketball team into Grossmont's annual summer camp as well, reports that his former star is doing well and headed to UC Irvine on a basketball scholarship.

"Tommy turned down Harvard and several other schools," said Foggiano while watching La Jolla pulverize yet another opponent this summer, this time Rancho Bernardo, from courtside Sat., July 2. "What UC Irvine did well was have Tommy meet with the engineering department chair each time he visited." Rutherford, an outstanding student, plans to pursue a degree in that field.

La Jolla did quite a job on Rutherford in that fateful late-December matchup. The Vikings' Alex Pitrofsky, at 6'6" giving up several inches to the towering Rutherford, got tough and played one of the best games--if not the best game--of his two-year high school varsity career. It was one for the ages for LJHS.

At the time, Grossmont was ranked in the top 10 of CIF county-wide.

Rutherford is well-known for being a likeable person and a hard worker with a great attitude. "Replacing a person like Tommy is pretty tough," said Foggiano, thinking of his present young team, which had played the 9 a.m. game just prior to La Jolla's tilt against the Broncos. "I've got a freshman and two sophomores." Two of those three are likely to be in the Hillers' starting lineup come next December.

"We relied on him so much, in so many ways," said the coach of his All-CIF performer. An observer said having Rutherford on the floor was like having an assistant coach out there. Foggiano nodded his head.

"People would ask me, 'Are you going to play him on the wing, have him do this and that?" the coach continued. "I told them, 'No. Why would I do that? I need him in the box. It's his college coach's job to do all that (other stuff to broaden his game)."

The veteran coach, who said he is nearing retirement from teaching at Grossmont High after over 40 years in the classroom, while also serving as athletic director, bemoaned the "ESPN world" (my term) that has made sports into glamor, sometimes compromising a hard work ethic. "You have kids who don't want to put in the hard work. They'd rather take a pill or take another shortcut to get good." He indicated his former star, Rutherford, wasn't like that.

Foggiano joked with a passerby, "Yeah, we were tied at 0-0 before the (9 a.m.) game started, and it was downhill from there."