College Notebook : Lilavois Snubs UCLA in Favor of Northridge Soccer Program

Bernard Lilavois of La Salle High in Pasadena has signed a letter of intent to play soccer next fall at Cal State Northridge.

Lilavois, a 5-foot, 9-inch, 140-pound forward, missed seven games because of a knee injury but still scored 20 goals and had 6 assists in 15 games for La Salle, which won the Santa Fe League title.

Lilavois said he chose Northridge over Santa Clara and UCLA.

“I’ve been watching Northridge play a few seasons and I think I have a better chance to develop there than at UCLA or Santa Clara,” Lilavois said. “Northridge isn’t as big as those other schools, yet, but I want to make a name for myself and the school.”

Lilavois is the fifth player Northridge has signed this spring.

Down and out: Allison Kincaid and Missy Conn of Cal State Northridge both lost second-round matches Thursday in the NCAA Division II individual tennis championships at Sonoma State.

Kincaid defeated Cal State Bakersfield’s Kathy St. Claire in the first round but lost to No. 2-seeded Portia George of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the second.

Conn lost to Cal Poly Pomona’s Xenia Anastasiadou, the tournament’s top-seeded player, after beating June Wernke of the University of Indianapolis in the first round.

Wave of momentum: Doug Simons, a senior left-handed pitcher for Pepperdine, has been named West Coast Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Year.

Simons, who played at Calabasas High, is 9-2 and has a 2.53 earned-run average and 10 complete games for the Waves. He has 67 strikeouts in 110 innings and has allowed just 28 walks. In conference play, he was 6-0 with a 1.21 ERA.

Simons’ 26-7 career record ties him for second on the school’s all-time win list with Houston Astros pitcher Mike Scott. Scott played at Pepperdine from 1974-76.

Pepperdine won the WCAC title this season and earned an NCAA tournament bid.

New SID: Greg Seiler has been named sports information director at Cal Lutheran, effective next Monday.

Seiler, a former assistant women’s athletic director at Tennessee, succeeds Jim Buchheim, who resigned in February to take an admissions counselor position at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

His duties will include media relations and promotional activities for the university’s 14 intercollegiate athletic teams.

Productive at the plate: Lenn Gilmore has 57 runs batted in this season, moving hime past Jason Thompson into sixth place on the Cal State Northridge single-season list. Hank Clark set the record in 1981 with 78 RBIs.

Awards: John Billingsley, a pitcher-outfielder for the Occidental College baseball team, has been selected as the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Player of the Year.

Billingsley, a senior left-hander, had a 6-3 record. He batted .420 with four home runs.

Occidental outfielder Bruce Fuller, who played at Hart High, and pitcher Mike Davies were also was named all-conference. Fuller, a senior, was the conference leader in stolen bases (35) for the second consecutive season. Davies was 4-5 but had a 3.05 earned-run average.

Add awards: Corey Aurand, whose .372 batting average led Moorpark in hitting, was named to the All-Western State Conference first team.

The sophomore center fielder hit .406 with seven home runs in conference play. In the last week of the season he was 14 for 27 with four home runs.

Volleyball acclaim: Jeff Campbell of Cal State Northridge was named to the All-Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. second team.

Campbell, a 6-foot, 6-inch, junior middle blocker, was the conference leader in dig average (2.59 a game) and was second in blocks (1.43 a game).

Campbell led the Matadors to a 15-19 record and seventh place in the WIVA.

Master’s honors: Junior Kathy Hotchkiss and sophomore Shelly Richardson were the only players from The Master’s College chosen to the All-NAIA District 3 first team in softball.

Pitcher Michelle Vail, a freshman right-hander, was a second-team selection.

Going west: The Valley College baseball team will move out of the Southern California Conference and into the Western State Conference next season, putting all the local junior colleges into one conference.

Coach Chris Johnson said he is happy that his team will compete against College of the Canyons, Moorpark, Pierce, Glendale and six other teams in the WSC.

“I played at Ventura, so I’m familiar with most of the schools in that conference,” Johnson said. “Next year it’s going to be tough. I have a lot of friends who are coaches in the conference and I look forward to competing with them. It’s going to be fun--I hope.”

Menacing Madrid: Pitcher Pauline Madrid of Sacred Heart University (Conn.), a former Kennedy High and Pierce College standout, finished the season with a 28-5 record after losing, 8-0, to Cal State Northridge in the championship game of the NCAA Division II North East regional.

Madrid pitched 36 innings in the two-day tournament while hobbled with an injured left knee.

Madrid, however, may not return for her senior season. Coach Pete DiOrio was not rehired as coach at season’s end, leaving the right-hander in a bit of a quandary.

“I don’t know where I’ll be,” she said after the regional title game. “It depends on who’s coach and what the housing situation here is.”

Add Madrid: She was selected to the All-North East regional team, as were pitcher Debbie Dickmann, third baseman Lisa Hall, second baseman Kim Bernstein, first baseman Pam Smith and right-fielder Lisa Erickson.

Change of pace: To the relief of Carol Collier, the Cal State Northridge women’s 400-meter relay team qualified last week for NCAA Division II national competition during the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships.

Collier, a sophomore, was running the first leg of the race for the first time. But she ran her fastest split of the season (11.9) and Northridge led the race throughout and qualified for nationals with a time of 46.74 seconds.

“We’ve been trying for it all season,” she said. “I was beginning to worry because it took us so long.”

First you win, now you don’t: Northridge sophomore Tyrone Jeffries won the 100-meter race and took second in the 110-meter high hurdles Sunday in the CCAA championships.

A second victory, in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, was nullified when Jeffries was disqualified for not having cleared two hurdles properly with his trailing leg. Jerry Coulson of Cal State Los Angeles was named the winner.

Record leap: Northridge triple jumper Lolita Pile’s winning mark of 39 feet, 10 inches was nearly 10 inches better than the previous CCAA meet record of 39- by Northridge’s Lori Costello in 1985.

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