Northridge Launches Bid for Historic Postseason Berth

There are no history majors on the Cal State Northridge volleyball team, but the way things are going for the eighth-ranked Matadors, they could make history at season’s end.

Northridge’s 15-10, 15-11, 3-15, 15-13 win over fourth-ranked Pepperdine, its first over the Waves, put the Matadors in good position for a drive toward their first postseason encounter. Northridge (8-10, 3-5 in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn.) has won 6 of its past 8 matches and already has played top-ranked USC and Pepperdine twice.

The Matadors next eight conference matches are against Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, Cal State Long Beach, San Diego State and Loyola, which, other than Santa Barbara, have traditionally finished in the middle or bottom of the WIVA with Northridge.

Northridge plays at Stanford tonight. The Matadors have never beaten the Cardinal in a conference match.

“We have a chance to make a run, which we’ve never had a chance to do in history,” Northridge Coach John Price said. “I want to make history a couple more times.”

Expensive win: The Northridge baseball team is on a mini-roll, what with last weekend’s doubleheader sweep of Southern Utah and Tuesday’s 15-7 victory over USC. The win over the 13th-ranked Trojans was the first win over a Division I school this season for Northridge (5-12), which plays host to Master’s at 2:30 his afternoon.

“Everyone seemed to have a feeling of confidence before the game,” Northridge Coach Terry Craven said. “Without re-inventing the game, we had been doing the talks, the breakdowns, isolated workouts and other things in practice to work out the problems. But I don’t know what it was. All of a sudden, the guys performed.”

No one performed better than right fielder Lenn Gilmore, who blasted his first three home runs, including a first-inning grand-slam, and finished the night with 8 runs batted in.

“I haven’t seen a dramatic change in his mechanics,” Craven said. “He just been making better contact.”

However, along with the win over USC came a loss. Center fielder John Bonilla became the second starting outfielder within a week to go down with an injury when he suffered a separated shoulder in a collision at the plate in the second inning. That Bonilla will only be out a week is relatively good news considering that left fielder Mark Anderson will be out for at least six weeks because of a broken patella suffered in last Friday’s loss to Westmont.

Add Anderson: The senior left fielder, who batted .369, hit 13 home runs and had 50 runs batted in last season, injured his left knee when he crashed into the outfield wall at Matador Field while trying to run down a ball that was hit for a home run.

“That day, unlike other days, the ball wasn’t carrying,” said Anderson, who plans to return for the Matadors’ final 15 games. “When the ball was hit, my first reaction was that it was going to stay in the park. I was running back facing the wall and the ball was kind of fading over my head and I lost track of the warning track.

“I guess I was overly aggressive. I’ve been there so long, I guess I lost respect that it was brick wall.”

Master’s blasters: Eric Beagles hit three home runs for The Master’s College in an NAIA District III doubleheader against Point Loma Nazarene on Saturday.

Despite Beagles’ homers--two in the first game and one in the second--Point Loma swept Master’s to drop the Mustangs to 4-8, 3-4 in district play.

Beagles, who is hitting .357, leads Master’s with 5 home runs and 14 RBIs. Senior Tod Skinner leads Master’s with a .412 average. He has 11 RBIs and 7 extra-base hits, including 2 home runs.

Smooth Sallin: The Valley College baseball team gave up a total of 46 runs in nonconference losses last week to powerhouses Orange Coast, Cerritos and Fullerton.

Valley (3-7) plays host to Orange Coast today and has what Coach Chris Johnson calls, “a good opportunity to right the ship.”

One Valley player who is already sailing along is first baseman Mark Sallin, who is batting .440. Sallin (6-2, 185 pounds), a sophomore from Montclair Prep, has a nine-game hitting streak.

Soccer signing: The Cal State Northridge soccer team took a step toward defending its California Collegiate Athletic Assn. title with the signing of El Camino College goalie Mike Littman, who led his team to the JC state title last season.

The Matadors also received a verbal commitment from Reseda High’s Terry Davila, who is the son of Northridge tennis Coach Tony Davila.

No time to waste: Darcy Arreola of Northridge has wasted little time in qualifying for the 1988 NCAA Division II track championships in San Angelo, Tex.

She won the 800-meter and 3,000-meter races in Saturday’s double-dual meet against UC Riverside and Cal State Los Angeles.

Her time of 2 minutes, 9.32 seconds in the 800 qualified her for the Division II championships, and her 9:29.4 clocking in the 3,000 was a personal best.

Best of the rest: Tyrone Jeffries and Dan Lange also qualified for the Division II championships. Jeffries, a sophomore from Muir High, won the 400-meter intermediate hurdles in a personal best of 52.49.

Lange, the defending California Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion in the hammer, placed third in his specialty with a season-best effort of 185 feet, 4 inches.

Victorious debut: Anna Howland of Moorpark College won in her first try at track and field. She won the 1,500-meter race with a time of 4:58.6 in a quad-meet involving Pierce, Santa Barbara and College of the Canyons last week.

Another Moorpark runner who made a strong showing in her debut was Debbie Ball, who won the women’s 3,000-meter race in 10:42.1.

Ball, a sophomore transfer from Cal State Northridge, has run primarily at the 1,500- and 800-meter distances in the past.

Triumphant return: Carol Kellick returned last weekend after a four-year absence from track and won the shotput event for Moorpark with a mark of 33 feet, 6 inches.

Kellick, who graduated from Royal High in 1984 and had not competed in track since, recorded the winning mark after just two days of practice.

Scott Spielman is another Raider athlete who is making a strong return; he served in the Army for three years.

He has won the javelin in both meets in which he has competed this spring with throws of 178-6 and 180-3.

Jump start: The Pierce College softball team is off to a 5-1 start, its best start in Coach Pat Skinner’s eight years at the helm of the Lady Brahmas’ program.

Pierce has rolled behind the pitching and hitting of Tina Shimozo and the hitting of Michele Marcione, Dawn McCary and Katrina Garcia.

Shimozo, a freshman from Chatsworth High, has a record of 4-1 with 3 shutouts and an earned-run average of 0.62. Shimozo also is batting .450.

Marcione is Pierce’s leading hitter at .462, while McCary is batting .455, and Garcia has a .349 average.

Staff writers Gary Klein, Gordon Monson, Ralph Nichols, Lauren Petersen and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.