VALLEY SPORTS : COLLEGE Digest : OTHER SPORTS : Slaten to Try Out for ’87 U.S. Team

Former Cal State Northridge pitcher Kathy Slaten was one of 64 softball players selected to try out for the U.S. team for the 1987 Pan American Games. The tryouts will be held June 12-19 at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Slaten and Barbara Jordan, teammates at Northridge last season, were the only Division II players nominated for the team tryouts. Jordan is the first alternate in the outfield.

Slaten and her 0.23 career earned run average may have left college softball just in time. The NCAA has moved the pitching rubber back from 40 to 43 feet on a trial basis for the next two seasons.

The No. 1-ranked CSUN women’s volleyball team extended its California Collegiate Athletic Assn. winning streak to 22 matches Tuesday night when it rallied to beat Cal State Los Angeles.

While several other teams hold out their top runners, saving them for next week’s West Regional, CSUN cross-country Coach Don Strametz will take a full team to San Luis Obispo for Saturday’s CCAA championships. “I didn’t want the West Regional to be our first race in a month. We’d be too stale,” said Strametz, whose team has not competed since the CSUN Invitational Oct. 11.

The Pierce College water polo team, considered the best in the school’s history, has forfeited three Western State Conference games because a player was academically ineligible. Pierce player Matt Frazier had enough units to comply with state regulations but had not maintained a C average, Coach Bob O’Connor said Wednesday.

O’Connor, who is also Pierce’s golf coach, has been trying to help the golf team with the help of Japanese engineering. Brahma golfers are using a Mitsubishi stroke analyzer to help improve their games. The machine indicates club speed, the distance the ball would have traveled and the angle it would have taken.