Small Colleges / Alan Drooz : Cal Poly Pomona, UC Davis Rated Among Top 4 in Women’s Tennis

Is the West the best in Division II women’s tennis?

The region that produces so much of the nation’s collegiate talent has three of the eight teams in the national tournament, which will begin Sunday at Cal State Northridge.

Even so, Midwest and Southwest teams are favored. Top-seeded is Southern Illinois Edwardsville, with Abilene Christian second. Two California teams follow--Cal Poly Pomona is third and UC Davis fourth.

The third Western team, Cal State Bakersfield, drew Abilene Christian in the first round. The rest of the field includes Pace College of New York, Florida Atlantic and Florida International.

Sunday’s first-round matchups are Southern Illinois (17-2) vs. Florida Atlantic (19-5); Abilene Christian (15-2) vs. Bakersfield (14-8); Pomona (17-9) vs. Florida International (13-4) and UC Davis (13-2) vs. Pace (10-6).

If the West doesn’t have the top team, it has the top-ranked singles player in sophomore Edna Olivarez of Cal State Los Angeles. She has a 34-3 record.

Other local singles entries are Xenia Anastasiadou, Mary Holycross, Chris Ryan and Debbie Jung of Pomona, Wendy Elliott of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Mary Beth Huewe and Deidre Wilson of Bakersfield, and Kelly Grattan of Cal State Northridge.

Team play will be held Sunday through Tuesday, then individual singles and doubles will start Wednesday.

Southland doubles entries are Anastasiadou-Ryan of Pomona, Elliott and Amy Lansford of San Luis Obispo, Allison Kincaid-Nicole Gillis of Northridge, Huewe-Wilson of Bakersfield, and Holycross-Jung of Pomona.

The men’s nationals will be held the next week at Northridge.

Baseball showdowns: The Golden State Athletic Conference baseball race has come down to the final games Thursday and Friday, with Azusa Pacific and Westmont College tied at 11-6. Azusa Pacific will play a three-game series against Cal Lutheran, and Westmont will play Southern California College.

If they tie, Azusa Pacific will play host to the NAIA District III playoffs by virtue of winning the season series. Azusa Pacific is hitting a team-record .341 and leads the conference in most offensive categories. Westmont leads in most pitching departments.

In the California Collegiate Athletic Assn., Cal State Dominguez Hills (16-6) holds a two-game lead over Cal Poly Pomona (14-8) and is 2 1/2 games ahead of Cal State Northridge (14-9) with two weeks to go. Pomona will play at Dominguez Hills at 2:30 p.m. today, and those teams will play one another three times in the final weekend.

Dominguez Hills will play five of its final eight games against Pomona and Northridge. The Toros have lost 9 of 11 to Pomona over the last three seasons. Pomona and Northridge play one another one more time.

CCAA teams learned that the NCAA may invite more than two Western teams to the Division II regional for the first time since 1982. CS Sacramento is the other California team in the playoff picture.

Biola University’s basketball team, one of the most successful NAIA programs over the last decade, will play a week’s worth of games in Japan, starting Saturday in Osaka. The team was invited by the Japan Amateur Basketball Assn. at the recommendation of Pete Newell and Cal State Dominguez Hills Coach Dave Yanai, who act as advisers to the Japanese national team.

Biola is scheduled to play a Japanese all-star college team at Sagana Gym and Kobe Central Gym in Osaka, then will take the bullet train to Tokyo and play in the Olympic Stadium.

Biola was one of several Southland schools that played the Japanese national team on a U.S. tour in 1985.

Cal State Bakersfield filled two coaching vacancies in its men’s athletic program last week, naming Pat Douglass basketball coach and Simon Tobin soccer coach.

Douglass, 37, has spent the last six seasons as coach at Eastern Montana, where his teams made four postseason appearances and won the Division II Western regional this season. He was voted Division II coach of the year.

Douglass, who has been a head coach for 14 years, was 119-57 at Eastern Montana. He graduated from University of the Pacific in 1972 and was a graduate assistant to Coach Stan Morrison there.

Douglass and former Bakersfield coach Bobby Dye are the only West coaches in the last 10 years to take teams to the Division II Final Four. Douglass replaces Jim Parks, who resigned after four seasons.

Tobin, 26, a London native, has been coaching Bakersfield area soccer clubs and select teams since last fall after coming to the United States in 1984 to work at a soccer camp.

Small College Notes Chapman College outfielder Darren Nelson broke school records with two home runs and six runs batted in against UC Riverside, giving him 18 and 65, respectively, for the season. Nelson, hitting .388, leads the CCAA in both categories and also in doubles with 20. . . . The Cal State Northridge baseball team is on a torrid home run pace, with 71 after 41 games. The next closest CCAA team has 39. Jim Vatcher, John Balfanz and Lenn Gilmore have all hit 10 or more. . . . The Northridge women’s softball team, ranked No. 1 in Division II, had a 27-game winning streak snapped with a 1-0 loss to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. . . . Sophomore sprinter Herbie Akpom of Azusa Pacific tried the decathlon for the first time--and won with 7,203 points. He also set a school record in the 110-meter high hurdles with a time of 14.02 seconds. Teammate Tim Lomheim had a school-record pole vault of 16 feet 7 inches. . . . Distance runners Sylvia Mosqueda and Gretchen Lohr scored more than half of Cal State L.A.’s points in a three-way track meet. Mosqueda won the 5,000 and 800, anchored the winning 1,600 relay and placed second in 400 meters. Lohr won the 3,000 and triple jump, was second in the 1,500 and 5,000, and fourth in the 800. . . . Louise Doulter of Occidental College set a school record of 137-1 in the discus, qualifying for the Division III national meet.