College Notebook : A Good Sportsman Who Made It With a Fighting Chance

The announcement came early this week.

Wayne Fluker had been selected as the Cal State Northridge basketball team’s Sportsman of the Year.

Hmmm. Is this the same Wayne Fluker who was in two fights during games this year? The same guy who was kicked out of a game against Cal State Dominguez Hills?

Fluker averaged two points and almost as many fouls per game last season. Someone figured out that the year before he averaged 5 1/2 fouls for every 40 minutes he played. He defends with about as much finesse as the Soviet Union.

A person close to the Cal State Northridge program was asked how Fluker won the sportsmanship honor.

Their response:

“Because when Wayne knocked a guy down, he always helped them back up.”

Now that makes sense.

Add Fluker: Fluker was the only Matadors’ player honored twice at the team’s awards banquet.

He was also selected as the team’s most inspirational player.

No question that he earned that award. No one else shaved an “N” in their hair before the West Regional.

Add CSUN basketball: Northridge announced that Reseda High’s Alan Gindlesperger signed a national letter of intent on Thursday.

Gindlesperger, a 6-1, 175-pound guard, is the second high school recruit to sign with the Matadors. Northridge previously signed Dirk Hare, a forward from Hart High.

Gindlesperger averaged 15 points a game and shot 55% from the field and 80% from the free-throw line last season.

Add signings: When Kip Brown transferred from Oral Roberts University to Moorpark College, he planned someday to return. He was coming out to California to improve his grades, and when the season was over, it was back to good ol’ ORU.

But when ORU Coach Dick Acres resigned last month, Brown started listening to offers. There were quite a few of them.

Duke was interested. So were San Jose State, New Mexico State, Boise State, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State Los Angeles and Seattle University.

Kip Brown has talked to all of them, but he hasn’t signed a letter of intent yet. He’s waiting for one last caller: Oral Roberts.

Ted Owens, the new ORU coach, will visit Moorpark on Monday. It’s a good bet that when Owens leaves he’ll have Brown’s signature on a letter.

Moorpark Coach Al Nordquist said that Brown has decided he wants to return to Oral Roberts.

“The reason he had said he would not go back was because of the coaching change,” Nordquist said. “He didn’t know if he’d be wanted. He didn’t know what the team’s style of play would be. He was afraid everything had changed.

“As it turned out, Owens kept both of Acres’ assistants and apparently they liked Kip enough to recommend that Owens come out and talk to him. Apparently, it’s almost for certain. He’s coming out to meet Kip, and if he’s likes him, he’ll sign him. And I’d be very surprised if he didn’t like him.”

At UCLA, they can’t recall the last time a freshman was a starter on the volleyball team. The last before Jeff Campbell, that is.

Until last month, Campbell, a 6-7 middle blocker from Chatsworth High, was a pillar of the Bruins’ team. He was the team’s leading blocker.

His job was to tattoo the forehead of any opponent who dared to try to spike the ball in his area. And he was good at his trade. Campbell stopped a lot of points from being scored--until tendinitis stopped him.

Campbell has chronic tendinitis in his knees. During the last month, it has kept him out of the Bruins’ lineup. He didn’t even practice until this week, but he has already announced himself fit and ready to play as the Bruins attempt to qualify for the NCAA championships by winning the West Regional this weekend at Cal State Northridge. UCLA has won the last five national championships in a row.

“It feels real good, better than at any other time this season,” Campbell said. “The tendinitis has always bothered me, but it had got to the point where I didn’t even feel like I could get up in the morning. I guess it just needed rest.”

If had not been for tendinitis, however, Campbell would probably not be playing volleyball.

At Chatsworth, he was one of the San Fernando Valley’s top basketball players. If his knees had not bothered him so much during his senior year on the basketball team, he would probably be playing major college basketball instead.

“I had a great junior year and I was getting a lot of inquiries from big schools prior to my senior year,” Campbell said. “But then tendinitis really hit me hard before the season started. I didn’t perform well at all. I got offers, but they were mostly from Division II schools.”

Had the decision come down to volleyball or basketball, Campbell said he would probably have chosen basketball.

“Volleyball is my favorite sport, but not by much,” Campbell said. “UCLA has only five scholarships for the whole volleyball team, so all they could offer me was a half scholarship. If I would have received a full-ride offer from a major college basketball team, I probably would have taken that.”

Third baseman Michey McAnany was selected as the most valuable player in the Libby Matson Tournament as the Cal State Northridge softball team placed third in a field of 12 Division I teams.

McAnany played flawless defense as the Lady Matadors won five games, including a 1-0 decision over 15th-ranked Cal, and a 2-1 win over top-ranked Cal State Fullerton.

Pitcher Kathy Slaten (31-7) won all of CSUN’s games in the tournament.

Arizona State won the tournament, while Fresno State placed second.

Northridge (47-14) hosts Stanford University in a nonconference game Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

The Northridge baseball team can overtake Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Dominguez Hills in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. race this week.

While Pomona (13-3) and Dominguez Hills (13-6) are playing each other five times, CSUN takes on Cal State Los Angeles (8-11, 12-33) in a four-game series.

The Matadors (13-6, 33-17-1) trails Pomona by 1 1/2 games and are tied with Dominguez Hills. Therefore, if CSUN can sweep CSLA and Pomona and Dominguez take turns beating each other, the Matadors could be in first place by the end of the week.

Notes

Pitcher Glen Braybrooks has already set a CSUN season record for saves with six. He also picked up two wins in relief last week to improve his record to 6-1. . . . CSUN outfielder Mark Ban has 15 home runs to lead the CCAA. He started the week with 58 runs batted in and a team-high .368 batting average. . . .

Moorpark College pitcher Steve Wapnick has signed a national letter of intent to attend Fresno State in the fall. Wapnick was a second-round draft choice of the San Diego Padres in the secondary phase of the major league draft in January. He will decide whether he will go to Fresno or sign with the Padres after the current season ends. . . .

The CSUN golf team is ranked eighth in the nation. Randy Cross, Jon McGihon and Pat Boyd are the squad’s top golfers. . . . The CSUN women’s tennis team is tied with Cal Poly Pomona in the CCAA. Both teams have 10-1 conference records. The Lady Matadors are 21-8 overall and ranked No. 3 among Division II teams. . . . CSUN women’s basketball Coach Leslie Milke announced the signing of point guard Monica Burke on Thursday. Burke, from Hart High, was a second-team All-Southern Section selection.