Small Colleges / Alan Drooz : New Conference Is Being Formed

The Southland’s newest athletic conference--and the first involving NAIA schools--will be unveiled at a press conference today at Azusa Pacific and will be operational in the 1986-87 school year.

The Golden State Athletic Conference will be made up of 6 of the NAIA District III’s 10 teams: Azusa Pacific, Southern California College, Westmont, Point Loma Nazarene, Cal Lutheran and Fresno Pacific. That leaves three other district teams--Cal Baptist, The Master’s and West Coast Christian--as independents. Biola was invited but hadn’t responded by the weekend and may be a last-minute entry.

The schools decided to form a conference to give themselves more consistent scheduling, a more consistent scholarship policy and more of an identity. Teams in the NAIA’s District III, which covers California and Nevada, have generally been lumped together as a league for convenience, but that was nothing more than a paper conference with no formal structure.

“We’re the only NAIA schools in a sea of NCAA schools in California,” said Gary Pine, who does the district’s sports publicity at Azusa Pacific. “It was confusing for the media, and the athletic directors viewed it as an identity crisis.”

Each of the member schools will play a minimum number of intercollegiate sports based on its enrollment. Schools with more than 1,100 full-time undergraduate students will be required to field teams in 10 sports, for example, but those with fewer than 500 will be required to play only six sports, and there is a sliding scale for those in between.

The conference will hold championship tournaments or meets in men’s and women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s soccer, baseball, men’s and women’s cross-country, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s track and field.

Athletic directors from the participating schools will hold a press conference this morning to formalize plans and explain details of their new conference.

Coach Sue Hebel of the Azusa Pacific women’s basketball team makes a case for her guard, Denise Duncan, being the best player ever in NAIA District III.

The backcourt leader of the 15th ranked NAIA team is the second-leading scorer in school history behind teammate Cindy DeYoung, and recently recorded the school’s first triple double, getting 20 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists against Point Loma Nazarene.

Hebel points out that Duncan last season became the only player in history to rank in the district’s top 10 in scoring, with a 17-point average; rebounding, 8.4; field-goal percentage, .462; free-throw percentage, .700, and assists, 3.5.

This season, the senior is among the top 10 in four of the five categories, averaging 15.3 points and 4.3 assists, shooting 51% from the floor and 74% from the line. Her team ranks second nationally in team defense and is among the leaders in scoring margin.

Coach Paul Stoklos is building a Division II women’s gymnastics power at the University of Alaska Anchorage by signing out-of-state talent.

Stoklos, a former assistant at the University of Arizona, has his six-woman team ranked in the top 10 in only his second season. The women are from five states, California, Washington, Arizona, New York and Louisiana, and Alberta, Canada. The gymnast from California is freshman Christine Barnett from Dana Point.

Teri Frankie, from Arizona, placed seventh in the balance beam last season and earned All-American honors.

The team lost all 11 of its meets its first season but has improved rapidly this year.

Since the school’s in-state rival, Alaska Fairbanks, doesn’t have a gymnastics team, trips are a minimum of 1,500 miles.

Four athletes from the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. have been honored for academics. Women’s basketball star Leone Patterson and teammate Shanna George were both chosen from Chapman College as academic All-Americans. Basketball players Brad Husen of UC Riverside and John Nojima of Cal State Dominguez Hills were chosen for the regional team, making them candidates for the All-American team chosen by the College Sports Information Directors’ Assn.

Small College Notes Cal State Bakersfield will play host to the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. swimming meet Thursday through Saturday. Bakersfield is the defending CCAA champion but Cal State Northridge won the national title. . . . The SCIAC swimming meet will be held the same days in South Gate. . . . Claremont-Mudd swimmer Carolyn Carson has lowered the school record in the 500-yard freestyle six times this season. Her best is 5 minutes 27.26 seconds. . . . Cal State Bakersfield basketball starter Jeff Hughes is out for the rest of the season with a broken foot. . . . Claremont-Mudd point guard Henfred Brard recently broke school records for assists in a season and a career. He has 123 for the season, 312 overall. . . . Designated hitter John Balfanz of Cal State Northridge got off to a fast start in the first week of baseball, hitting three home runs in a 16-9 victory over Azusa Pacific. . . . Whittier’s Dave Weida leads the SCIAC basketball players in scoring with a 24-point average and in rebounding with a 9.3 average. Julie Curtis leads the women in both categories with averages of 23.4 and 11. Weida’s scoring improves to 26.3 in conference play. . . . Whittier’s Lady Poets won a 67-66 double-overtime game against Pomona-Pitzer, halting Pitzer’s 45-game SCIAC winning streak. . . . Marsha Dedrick of Cal Baptist led the nation in shooting percentage with her 63.7% in the latest NAIA women’s basketball statistics. . . . Lupe Quintana, a walk-on freshman center on the Cal State Los Angeles basketball team, leads the CCAA women in rebounding with 9.2 a game. . . . The Cal State San Bernardino basketball teams have already posted their best seasons. The women’s 16-6 record is the most wins for any sport in school history.