Unexpected Conference Cutbacks Bewilder Mission Officials

The Southern California Conference has announced that 15 teams in four sports at Los Angeles community colleges have been eliminated because the schools could not guarantee they would field teams during the 1986-87 season.

The announcement, which followed a meeting of intercollegiate athletic representatives Monday at San Bernardino Valley College, surprised Mission Athletic Director Phil Lozano, who learned that the list of eliminated programs included men’s and women’s cross-country at Mission.

“We went to that meeting with the idea that we were going to continue to have those programs,” Lozano said. “And as far as I’m concerned, nothing was cut.”

Joe Iantorno, conference president, disagreed. When Mission representatives announced that they had no one to coach cross-country, the program was eliminated from the conference schedule.

The conference also tentatively cut the men’s golf program at Mission, and baseball, softball and men’s cross-country at Valley College.

Lozano, like Valley Athletic Director George Goff, still plans to have the programs in the fall.

“In those sports where you definitely need a set schedule, football for example, I can see the need to commit early,” he said. “But cross-country isn’t set up like that. It’s set up with mini-conference meets where about half the teams in the conference run at the same place. Adding a team to a meet isn’t a big problem.

“The conference may say our program has been eliminated, but it would be very easy to get back on the schedule,” Lozano said.

All the program needs is a coach.

Layoffs of full-time faculty in the district, which take effect June 30, have left Lozano with two teachers to replace this fall. So far, the Los Angeles Community College District has not informed him who those replacements will be.

So Lozano waits.

“I don’t know who I’m going to get, but we will have a program,” he said. “I might even coach.”

Lozano already has committed to coaching baseball. Depending on his personnel in the fall, he may also coach cross-country or soccer. Lozano is also searching for a golf coach.

He is confident that Mission will have the four athletic programs it intended to field this year, but isn’t as confident about the quality of those teams.

“The whole year, in a sense, will be a starting point,” Lozano said. “I don’t think it will be fruitful for anybody. There are just too many things up in the air to do a good job recruiting or to even maintain the athletes we already have on campus.”

Goff added that he has prospective coaches for baseball and softball, but that their availability is in question. He said the district does not want teachers from outside physical education to coach athletic teams, leaving his and other programs in a bind.

“Our administration believes that by the end of the summer, that dispute will be resolved,” he said.

The conference has given Los Angeles schools until Sept. 22 to decide which spring sports they will field, Iantorno said. Eight of the 18 schools in the conference are from the Los Angeles district.