Summer

BURBANK HIGH — On paper and on the court, the Hoover High girls’ basketball team was simply overmatched by Bellarmine-Jefferson when the two teams met in Burbank High Summer League competition on Wednesday. The Guards, who won the CIF Southern Section Division V-A title last season before moving on to capture the Division V state crown, employed physical, aggressive defense and well-rounded offense to hand the Tornadoes a 65-10 loss. Bell-Jeff got 14 points from Julia Tani and nine apiece from Rashonda Napier and Jasmine Smith, while Margeaux Gupilan and Leslie Lopez-Wood led the Guards defensively with six steals each.

BURBANK HIGH ? In some ways, the St. Francis High and Burroughs basketball teams are similar. St. Francis will have its first full summer of having second-year co-Coaches Ray O?Brien and Jeff Stephens on board, and Burroughs will turn to new Coach Adam Hochberg to kick off a new chapter in the program?s history. The two teams met Thursday afternoon, with St. Francis getting a game-high 22 points from guard Tommy Jordan to help the Golden Knights earn a 56-54 win in a Burbank Summer League game at Burbank High.

BURBANK — Just as motorists were getting used to paying less than $2 at the gas pump, prices have begun creeping up. The price of regular gas has increased a penny per day since last week and, in some areas of Burbank and Glendale, gas prices have hit the $2 mark, said Marie Montgomery, an Automobile Club of Southern California spokeswoman. Gas prices in Burbank and Glendale ranged from $1.84 to $2 Thursday and are likely to go up, she said. The average price of regular gas throughout the state is $1.93, which is up from $1.79 last month, she said.

The Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, now at the Grove Theater Center in Burbank’s George Izay Park, is giving a fresh and professional look to an aging American classic — Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer” with an almost all-Asian cast. The “sudden” and unexpected tragedy of “last summer” was the horrific death of poet Sebastian Venable, as witnessed by his young and attractive cousin Catherine Holly. For all the summers before then, Sebastian’s mother, wealthy Violet Venable, had been his vivacious traveling companion.

Several families continued their weekly tradition of meeting on Wednesday night near the playground during the Summer Concert Series at Verdugo Park in Glendale. Settled back in lawn chairs and forming a semicircle around a table filled with Chinese takeout boxes, parents were digging into their plates and sipping lemonade while their children played nearby. It’s like a reunion for families that used to frequent Nibley Park, said Seth Bass of Glendale. “We met when the kids were babies,” Bass said.

Even though the school year has come to a close, local students don’t have any excuse to sit still. The Burbank Community YMCA is offering a wide array of programs to keep busy during the summer. Four summer camp programs get children from kindergarten to eighth grade involved in on-site activities such as swimming and the chance to travel to locales such as Castle Park in Riverside and the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Staff members are also gearing up to start their second Health Intervention Program in the fall.

As the line for Sunday night’s Starlight Bowl concert snaked around the asphalt path, Kevin Collier was sitting pretty. Collier was second in line, counting the minutes till California Transit Authority took the stage. Collier came out to see the band because of its famed member, Danny Seraphine, the original drummer for Chicago. “I was a huge fan of Chicago in the early days and went to many of their concerts in the ’70s, so I was very excited when I heard California Transit Authority was coming,” Collier said as he leaned back in his lawn chair.

After the city’s summer concert season at the Starlight Bowl comes to a close in mid-August, another show will go on. The last show of the summer at the Starlight Bowl is a community-organized benefit concert on Aug. 24 to raise money for a new scoreboard at John Burroughs High School’s Memorial Field. The city’s three Kiwanis clubs have banded together in a quest to raise about $50,000 needed for a new scoreboard. Club members hope to bring in a bulk of those funds through the end-of-summer show.

The Burbank-bred band BlueLight takes seriously the saying, “The band that plays together, stays together.” Two of the core members of the rock band, Michael Hastings and Dennis O’Donnell, are coming together for a fourth time to perform O’Donnell’s original songs on July 20 at the Starlight Bowl. They will open for California Transit Authority. BlueLight adds a hometown feeling to the Starlight Bowl season, said Garth Nelson, former deputy director of Recreation Services for Burbank Park, Recreation and Community Services, who left the post Tuesday.

While many school systems are struggling to keep summer school open, the program in the Burbank Unified School District is experiencing its highest enrollment ever. The district expanded its criteria this year for student eligibility, which is based on students’ test scores, William McKinley Elementary Principal Bobbie Kavanaugh said. About 3,400 district students are attending classes this summer, an increase of about 600 students from last year, Deputy Supt. Joel Shapiro said.