CLU to Stay in GSAC for School Year : Kingsmen Spared Instant Expulsion

The Golden State Athletic Conference agreed Friday to honor Cal Lutheran’s membership through June 1, 1989, despite the university’s decision to leave the conference for NCAA Division III membership.

In a GSAC executive meeting at Azusa Pacific, athletic directors from the 8-member conference voted, 5 to 1, to allow Cal Lutheran to remain in the conference until the end of the 1988-89 academic year. Robert Doering, Cal Lutheran’s athletic director, and Ben Norton, GSAC’s acting president, did not vote.

The CLU Board of Regents voted last Saturday to join the Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in all sports. Cal Lutheran, a charter member of the GSAC, belongs to the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics in all sports but football.

GSAC’s decision to allow Cal Lutheran to fulfill its schedule through the academic year counteracts a rule that the conference adopted in a Sept. 7 meeting. That rule immediately terminates membership of any school that joins another conference.

Norton said that Jerry Miller, Cal Lutheran’s president, helped to convince the conference athletic directors that CLU was justified in remaining in the conference.

“The conference could have taken a hard line,” Norton said. “In a sense, this decision was a bit of a compromise because Cal Lutheran would have liked to stay in the GSAC until it became a full SCIAC member.”

Miller said that Cal Lutheran wanted to remain in the GSAC until it eliminates all athletic scholarships in accordance with Division III rules. He said that the earliest any Cal Lutheran team would begin competition in the SCIAC is the fall of 1991.

“It would have been nice to move fully from one conference directly into another,” Miller said. “Fulfilling this year’s GSAC schedule seemed to be a middle ground and I am comfortable with that.”