artesia news

socalogo.gif (8739 bytes)
SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Artesia Update: Amaury's Arm,
Sam's Move & More--(Sept. 12, 1999)

Just hanging out at the Long Beach Fall Hoops Classic can stumble upon a wealth of information. Players, teams, transfers, coaches, moves, and other miscellaneous stuff.

This weekend, QBL showed up, and they were without most of their bigger and more well known juniors, virtually their entire front-line. We learned why, and it wasn't just to give the "younger" guys some playing time. Here's what we learned:

Amaury Fernandez (6'-9" Jr. PF) is out and was not able to play, having just had surgery to repair his shoulder, the same one that his arm became dislocated from during the EBO-EA Fresno Hoop Summit in early June, and then which he injured again in Vegas during a classic battle in a late night game against the Pump N Run Gold team. According to the Artesia assistant coach we spoke with, Amaury had the surgery about a week ago, and he will be out of action for at least a month, maybe longer. Our best wishes to him, and a speedy recovery.

Jack Martinez (6'-8" Jr. PF) is reportedly still home in the Dominican Republic visiting family and so he was not at the tournament. He will reportedly come back to the US this week.

Sam Nadeau (6'-7" Jr. PF/SF) has reportedly moved back to New York, and will not be attending Artesia this year. We don't know anything else about why he transferred back to NY, but we'll try to find out.

We didn't see Jon Steffanson (6'-5" So. SG) at the tournament, but we hear that everything is fine with him and that he'll be at school, so no problems there.

Artesia will still be the dominant team in CIF Southern Sectoin Division I-AA. So even without Nadeau they still have a starting front line which will, by the beginning of the regular CIF season (i.e., by the tournament time in December) feature Amaury Fernandez (6'-9" Jr. F), Andre Hazel (6'-0" Sr. PG), Jon Steffanson (6'-5" So. SG/SF), and Jack Martinez (6'-8" Jr. PF). And among the choice for the fifth starter, Wayne Merino will have Ryan Meilleur (6'-7" So. F), who is moving up from the JV and played very well throughout the summer, and retruning varsity players Franklin Matos (6'-3' So. PG/SG), Ryan Reyes (6'-3" Jr. PG/SG), Tony Roberts (6'-3" Jr. SG) and Malcohm Herron (6'-4" Jr. SF). They'll also have available Armond Ivory (6'-2" Jr. SG) who was on the roster last year, but didn't see much playing time and they should also have Aaron Aska (5'-10" Sr. G), Deshawn Jones (6'-4" So. SG), and Ricky Thornton (5'-10" Sr. PG/SG).

At least in Division I-AA, we don't see too many teams who can even begin to challenge this lineup, although without Nadeau, this does drop them ever so slightly down just a notch. The only problem for other teams in Division I-AA is that there were already so many notches up, that other than maybe Fontana (depending on their enrollment) we're not sure who will have the horses to challenge.