Saga of Moorpark and Its Coach: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Gary Abraham has his haircut and no place to go. Perhaps it is better that way.

Abraham, the coach of the Moorpark College women’s basketball team, promised his players they could cut his hair if they won the Western State Conference championship.

So there he stood on campus last week as members of the team sheared away.

“They all got a whack at it,” Abraham said. “I had a barber on hand to straighten it out after the team got finished with me.”

The barber, however, did not have much hair with which to work.

“It’s shorter than a crew cut,” Abraham said.

Unfortunately for the coach, his team’s playoff experience lasted about as long.

Cypress upset the Lady Raiders, 63-55, Tuesday.

Heavy hitter: Jeff Campbell of Cal State Northridge has been named Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. player of the week.

Campbell, a 6-foot-7, 220-pound junior middle blocker, had 18 kills in a loss to top-ranked USC and 28 kills in a Matador victory over sixth-ranked UC Santa Barbara.

Hanks for the memories: Barry Hanks, who passed for 1,810 yards and 18 touchdowns in leading Valley College to an 8-2 record last season, will take a recruiting trip to Miami (Ohio) this weekend. Hanks is expected to transfer to either Miami (Ohio) or Western Kentucky.

Striking back: Jon Egertson missed the start of Cal Lutheran’s baseball season because of head and back injuries he suffered in a car accident.

Since his return two weeks ago, he has made up for lost time. Egertson had 7 hits in 11 at-bats, including 2 doubles and 2 home runs.

Egertson, who started at second base for CLU as a freshman in 1986, transferred back to CLU after playing for Florida State last season. Egertson and shortstop Henry Campos, a transfer from Santa Monica College, have strengthened the left side of the Cal Lutheran infield after shortstop Daren Cornell was declared academically ineligible.

Campos is batting .410 after going 4 for 9 with a two-run triple against La Verne on Monday.

A hit debut: Tom Bonds, who missed Cal Lutheran’s first eight games because of a sprained ankle, went 3 for 6 with a home run in his return to the lineup in a nonconference doubleheader against La Verne on Monday.

Bonds, CLU’s designated-hitter and right fielder, clinched a Kingsmen sweep with a three-run home run in the eighth inning of the second game. Cal Lutheran (6-4) opens NAIA District III play at home against The Master’s College today.

Before the season, Bonds suffered ligament damage in his right ankle playing basketball during a team conditioning session.

Surprise, surprise: Thus far, it has been a season of surprises for the Pierce College baseball team. On the negative side, the Brahmas were the victims of a triple play Tuesday in their 12-3 win over L. A. City College. With runners on first and second, John Brasher lined out to the shortstop, who began the 6-4-3 triple play.

That play, however, has been about the only negative that has befallen the Brahmas, who are off to a 6-0 start.

“This is a juggernaut,” said Coach Bob Lyons, whose team finished 13-21 overall and 9-16 in the Western State Conference last season. “But the test comes Thursday.”

The Brahmas travel to traditionally strong El Camino today and play two games against Mt. San Antonio College next week.

Major achievements: Jeff Wetherby, the former College of the Canyons and USC slugger who plays in the Atlanta Braves organization, batted .303 with 78 RBIs last season at Double-A Greenville and was honored with the Hank Aaron Award as the Braves’ minor league player of the year.

Dana Ridenour, a right-handed pitcher in the New York Yankees organization who played at Sylmar High and UCLA, was named as one of the organization’s top 10 prospects in Baseball America magazine. Ridenour, 22, was 5-4 last season with a 1.77 earned-run average and 90 strikeouts in 66 innings at Ft. Lauderdale of the Class-A Florida State League.

Up the ladder: Pat Bolden is the seventh basketball player in Cal State Northridge history to score more than 1,000 points in his career.

The 6-5 senior has 1,013 in four seasons, placing him sixth on the all-time list. He needs 41 in Northridge’s final two regular-season games to tie Mark Cooley for fifth place.

Bolden is averaging 15.7 points a game this season--16.2 in 12 California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games.

Playoff-bound: With one regular-season game remaining on its basketball schedule, Cal Lutheran (15-12 overall, 10-3 in Golden State Athletic Conference play) already has clinched a postseason playoff berth. The Kingsmen have won 9 of their past 11 games.

Steve deLaveaga leads both CLU and the GSAC in scoring with a 29-point average. Bill DesRochers of Azusa Pacific ranks second in the conference, averaging 22 points a game. CLU center Mike Demeter is the conference’s third-leading rebounder, averaging 7.5 a game.

Cal Lutheran’s regular-season finale will be Saturday at Cal Baptist in Riverside. The Kingsmen open District III tournament play March 1.

Psyched up: When Wendy Olson graduated from Cal Lutheran after four seasons as the Regals’ starting catcher, she started looking for a job.

In the process, she determined she really wanted two jobs--one as a school counselor and the other as a softball coach.

“When I was applying for one counselor’s job, I had to take a goal-setting and psychological make-up test,” she said. “I realized when I took that test that I really wanted to try coaching someday.”

As it turned out, she can do both.

Olson, 23, has replaced Carey Snyder as coach of the Cal Lutheran softball team. She also is an admissions counselor at the school.

Snyder stepped down after six seasons as CLU’s coach to become associate athletic director at Stroudsberg University in Pennsylvania. Under Snyder, the Regals finished 32-16 in each of the past two years.

Nice surprise: As far as Moorpark College track Coach Manny Trevino was concerned, last weekend was one instance when it was OK for the men’s team to finish second.

In a tri-meet with Cuesta and Glendale, Moorpark finished only seven points behind the Glendale men’s team, which has not lost a dual meet since 1979. Glendale scored 81 points, Moorpark had 74 and Cuesta had 26.

“The sad thing is that if Cuesta wasn’t in the meet, we would have won,” Trevino said. “It was the closest meet they’d been in in nine years, so it was a moral victory.”

Staff writers Mike Hiserman, Gary Klein, Ralph Nichols, Gordon Monson and Lauren Peterson contributed to this notebook.