The Colleges : Sturges Finds Slower Pace in Cedar City
Cedar City sits in a valley surrounded by the rugged and mountainous terrain of Southern Utah.
It is not a place where one is likely to find a kid who grew up in the suburbs.
Yet, 2 1/2 years ago, when his athletic career at Thousand Oaks High had run its course, that is precisely where Joey Sturges headed.
Three circumstances led Sturges to Cedar City and his choice of colleges, Southern Utah State.
The first: a half football scholarship.
The second: a half baseball scholarship.
The third: the great outdoors.
Emphasis should be placed on the third reason.
“I wanted to get away from home,” said Sturges, who will start at middle linebacker today when the Thunderbirds play host to Cal State Northridge.
Sturges, a 6-foot, 1-inch, 210-pound sophomore, never played the part of a stereotypical Southern California teen-ager.
Yes, he went to the beach--”when I didn’t have anything else to do,” he said--but he preferred to go fishing or hiking.
Now Sturges doesn’t have to travel far to do either.
He goes fishing at either Beaver Creek or Panguitch Lake North, both of which are within a 30-minute drive. He skis at Brian Head resort, less than 20 miles away.
And should he choose to hike? Trails also are near at hand.
Most of Sturges’ time is spent at school, however. More specifically, on the athletic fields.
As a freshman he was on the special teams, playing linebacker but in only 1 game.
This season, however, he has flourished in a starting role. His 89 tackles rank third on the team.
In baseball, Sturges was a backup catcher, batting .385 and driving in 5 runs. Next spring he expects to start.
“I’m doing pretty well,” he said. “I like it here. It’s kind of slow sometimes, but that’s OK. When I come back home it’s a lot different.
“The good thing about playing here is that when you work out, you work out. Back home there are just too many distractions.”
Man or machine?: The speaker: Jim Harrick, UCLA’s basketball coach.
The player Harrick was talking about: Well, you figure it out.
“He’s very intelligent, so darn athletic and quick,” Harrick said. “He’s the kind of guy who makes the proper move every time. If you play real smart, become fundamentally sound and step in the proper direction, you become a robot and you can play because you beat the other guy. He’ll be a machine by the end of the year.”
Pooh Richardson perhaps?
No. Keith Owens, a 6-7 1/2 sophomore walk-on from Birmingham High who played only 17 minutes and scored all of 6 points last season for the Bruins.
“He’s impressed me in practice, and may work himself into getting some minutes,” Harrick said.
Owens, a forward, played all 40 minutes of a UCLA intrasquad game last week and scored 15 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.
The bright side: Perhaps there is a silver lining to the cloud hanging over the Northridge women’s volleyball team after its loss to UC Riverside in the semifinals of the Premier tournament at the Air Force Academy last week.
CSUN plays Riverside in a California Collegiate Athletic Assn. match Tuesday with a conference championship on the line. And Coach Walt Ker would rather have his team feeling lean and mean than fat and happy.
“It’s always easier to get ready to play a team after a loss then if you’ve beaten them,” Ker said. “It’s easier to get motivated.”
Northridge, the defending Division II national champion, defeated Riverside in a conference game at the CSUN gym 2 weeks ago. This time the game will be played at Riverside.
Soccer awards: Coach Marwan Ass’ad and forward Steve Lazarus of Northridge were the major award winners on the California College Athletic Assn. soccer team.
Ass’ad guided the Matadors, a team dominated by underclassmen, to a share of their 5th consecutive conference championship and was selected coach of the year. Lazarus, a senior, was voted conference player of the year after he led CSUN in scoring with 17 points during CCAA matches.
Steven Herbert and staff writers Mike Hiserman and Gary Klein contributed to this notebook.