BASEBALL : Master’s Starts Probation Instead of Playoffs Despite Finishing 2nd in NAIA District III
Even though The Master’s College baseball team finished second in the NAIA’s District III, it will not participate in postseason playoffs. The school’s athletic program was suspended for one year and placed on probation for another by the NAIA last fall for “multiple violations in multiple sports,” according to Wally Schwartz, associate executive director of the NAIA.
Geoff Zahn, athletic director at The Master’s, said the rules violations involved “a number of athletes in different sports who had participated but who weren’t eligible.” While Zahn would not say how many athletes were involved, he said the violations stemmed from “a few isolated cases.”
Schwartz said NAIA eligibility standards were broken by six Master’s athletes in five sports during the 1985-86 school year. The violations involved one athlete in each of the following sports: men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s softball and soccer. There were two violations in baseball.
“The student in soccer participated while not being enrolled in 12 credit hours during the term,” Schwartz said. “That was a violation. The other cases involved similar eligibility standards having to do with academics.”
Zahn, who came to The Master’s after the infractions occured, blamed the problems on “institutional error,” and said, “Some things just got overlooked.”
Said Schwartz, who has become increasingly concerned about academic standards in the NAIA: “There was too much rationalization going on out there. They weren’t doing enough administrative cross-checking. I don’t think the violations were deliberate, it was just sloppiness.
“They should be aware of the rules. It’s not that difficult. Some of the rules get complicated, but the administration should be aware of them.”
When Zahn and Nate Wright, a faculty representative, discovered the rules violations, they contacted NAIA officials and filed a 20-page report disclosing their findings.
“We’ve had real good cooperation with them,” Schwartz said. “They’ve restructured their program to square things around. They are keeping us informed of their procedures and so far they’re holding to them. We hope that continues.”
A penitent Zahn said: “When we saw that we had done wrong, we turned ourselves in.”
And now Master’s is turning its baseball program around. After losing 13 of 19 district games last year, the Mustangs finished 17-7 this season. “Considering the adversity we faced, we made some big strides by finishing second this year,” Zahn said.
Scott McIntyre was missing from the Cal State Northridge baseball lineup in important games Tuesday against UC Riverside and Wednesday against Cal Poly Pomona.
McIntyre said Dr. Candice Levenson, the Northridge team physician, removed a nail from the small finger of his right hand on Tuesday and had expressed concern that an infection might have already spread to the bone. McIntyre, a 6-4, 210-pound junior catcher, had injured the finger April 23 in a game against Cal State Los Angeles but had been playing regularly.
“My parents and I were scared stiff,” McIntyre said. “We decided to see my orthopedic man, Dr. Dennis Sakai. He looked at it, X-rayed it and determined that the bone was not infected.”
McIntyre plans to be in the lineup Saturday in CSUN’s California Collegiate Athletic Assn. finale at Cal State L.A.
Postseason update: Canyons (28-6-1, 22-2-1) travels to Oxnard today for the opener in a best-of-three series for the Western State Conference baseball title.
From there, both teams will travel to the regional playoffs May 16-17. The winner of the regional advances to the state finals, an eight-team, double-elimination tournament that will be held at three sites in San Jose, May 21-25.