A Change In Direction : Bob Hiegert was a pretty good baseball coach at Cal State Northridge. Twice in 18 years, his teams even won Division II titles. But there were still more challenges to meet, more goals to reach-as athletic director.

Bob Hiegert has attended practically every Cal State Northridge home baseball game this year, but he has never stayed for more than a few innings.

It’s not because he isn’t interested.

For 18 seasons, Hiegert and Northridge baseball were more or less synonymous. He helped to design, build, landscape and paint the Northridge baseball facility. He raised money, planned trips, ran summer camps and somehow found time to coach the Matadors to a 609-411-9 record and six California Collegiate Athletic Assn. titles.

Hiegert, 43, resigned his coaching position last June, less than a month after leading CSUN to its second Division II championship. Terry Craven, a CSUN assistant for 14 seasons, took his place.

Now, instead of holding center stage at games, Hiegert remains in the background.

He sits in a corner of the bleachers or stands off to the side, away from the crowd. He says he doesn’t want to be questioned about players, umpires, or--heaven forbid--coaching strategy.

Said Hiegert: “It’s not my place to make decisions about players or strategy anymore. It wouldn’t be fair for me to sit in the stands and make judgments when I’m not close enough to the situation.”

Hiegert, who retained his position as CSUN athletic director, says he resigned for the good of the school, the team, his family and perhaps even his health.

“Resigning was the right thing to do,” he said. “The position of athletic director needed more time and I felt I could help the department more in that capacity.

“I felt like I wasn’t doing as much as athletic director as I should and it was the same thing on the baseball field. Success-wise, that wasn’t the case, of course. We were winning everything we were supposed to, but things off the field were not functioning as smoothly as they should have been.

“I need more time to be effective as athletic director. Being a baseball coach had never been a job to me, but by the end of last season it had become that way.

“I kept looking forward to the end of the season, so I could get going and get some other things done.”

The team wouldn’t cooperate. It kept winning.

“They did a great job, but to put them in that situation again, wouldn’t have been fair,” he said.

The players say his decision was disappointing, not surprising.

Said outfielder Mark Ban: “He’s got a lot of responsibility as athletic director and I think we all realized that the move would probably be better for him.

“When he called and told me, he said he felt he could do more overall good for the school this way.”

Hiegert was relieved after the decision.

“My wife told me that the nicest thing about last summer was that I was home more, and when I was, I wasn’t on the phone all the time,” he said.

“Also, when we took a week or two vacation, I didn’t have to worry about some player I thought I had signed backing out at the last minute, or a team canceling a game. Finally, I had a chance to relax.”

Dressed in blue nylon sweat pants and a red sports shirt, Bob Hiegert appeared relaxed as he leaned against the back fence of the Northridge baseball bleachers last week.

But the tone of his voice and the look on his face did not. He now feels like a stranger on the field he helped build.

“Sometimes it’s tough to sit here and watch kids I’ve coached for three or four years and see them do things different,” Hiegert said. “Maybe they’re doing it better, maybe worse, but it’s different.

“You don’t spend your entire adult life building up a program and then just cast it aside. I miss baseball a lot. Everyone that leaves the game after so many years goes through the same thing. Some get over it. Some don’t. I’m not sure which category I’m in at this point.”

Hiegert avoids giving Craven advice.

“I think he realizes that although he was the old coach, I’m the new coach,” Craven said. “He’s done his best to stay away and not make it look like he’s checking up on me and I appreciate that. I’m sure it’s hard for him, after being so closely involved with the program for so long.”

Hiegert has seen the Northridge program grow from the bottom up, and who could blame him for reminiscing a little every time he looks out over the field?

Hiegert replaced Dick Enberg as an assistant coach in 1965 after playing in the Los Angeles Angels’ organization for two years.

Two years later, he inherited a program that had finished better than .500 only twice in a six-year history. At 23, he was the youngest college head coach in the nation.

In the next 10 years, Northridge never had a losing season. It won five CCAA titles from 1970-75. “During that period of time, there probably wasn’t too many stronger programs in the nation,” he said.

In 1970, the Matadors beat No. 1-ranked Chapman College in the West Regionals on their way to their first national championship. It was especially gratifying to Hiegert, because he refused a playoff bid the previous year because CSUN didn’t have a healthy catcher.

Said Hiegert: “We had three catchers and they were all hurt in the last game of the year. One of the toughest things I ever had to do was tell those kids that we’d have to refuse the bid. Fortunately, many of those same kids returned the following year and we won the whole thing.”

Hiegert says his biggest win was his last.

The Matadors became the first team in five years to battle back through the loser’s bracket to win the national title. After dropping a 7-6 decision to Florida Southern in its second game, Northridge won four in a row, including back-to-back 10-0 and 10-5 wins over Florida Southern to win the championship.

What was most rewarding to Hiegert, though, was not the fact that the Matadors won, but how they did it.

“Every kid in that World Series who did well was every kid that I hoped would do well,” Hiegert said. “If you’ve ever been in a coaching situation you know that often times there are kids who get more than they deserve. Sometimes, the kid who puts the most into something gets cheated. That didn’t happen.

“The kids who were the heart and soul of our club throughout the season were the ones who did the best in the World Series. That was very gratifying.”

But when the season was over, Hiegert, for the first time, felt like he needed a rest.

“I didn’t want to go back and start recruiting again, and go out and work on the field, and start fighting for money. Usually, I didn’t even think about that. When the season was over, I was ready to go out and start all over again.”

Not this time, though.

“I think my daughter Lorie probably put the uncertainty of the situation into words best when I asked her what she thought about the idea of me resigning. She said, ‘Dad, I don’t know how it will be. You’ve never done anything else.’ ”

Hiegert is not sure he won’t return to coaching.

“I’ve never had any second thoughts that, at the time, I made the right decision,” he said. “Whether that decision will be right in the future, I don’t know. If the right baseball job came along right now I’d be interested, as I would be in the right athletic director’s job.

“Right now, though, I’m happy, and busy at Northridge. Certainly, it’s a challenge for me and that’s what I’ve always enjoyed most. The challenge of a job.”