The Colleges : A Cold Fact Confronts Master’s Harrison

Chris Harrison thought that he had escaped.

After spending his college baseball career at Oral Roberts in Tulsa, Okla., and coaching last season at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., Harrison thought that athletes were the only flakes he would be dealing with as an assistant coach and sports information director at The Master’s College.

Then, starting Monday, snowflakes began to appear on the baseball field at Master’s campus in Newhall.

“We were shoveling ice off the field,” said Harrison, who has coached in the Netherlands and taken Athletes in Action teams to Czechoslovakia and Poland. “Last year in New England we were playing games when the windchill was in the 20s. This is like New England right now.”

Winging it: Joey Kirk has been doing more sitting than scoring this season for the Wichita Wings of the Major Indoor Soccer League, but the former Cal State Northridge All-American probably will see action tonight when the Wings visit the Forum for a game against the Lazers at 7:35.

Kirk, a forward, has been slowed by tendinitis in his left knee. He has played in just nine of the Wings’ 27 games and scored his first and only point of the season a few weeks ago in a game against the Dallas Sidekicks.

“It’s been frustrating, sitting in the stands for two months,” said Kirk, who missed the Wings’ first trip to Los Angeles in December. “I should have some goals, to tell you the truth. Hopefully, I can get untracked in front of my family and friends in L. A.”

The Wings are in fifth place in the seven-team MISL.

Bad call: Quite a production was made over the appearance Tuesday of Loyola Marymount standout Hank Gathers at Cal State Northridge’s home basketball game against Cal State Los Angeles.

Drum roll, please. The announcer introduced, “the NCAA’s leading scorer and rebounder, from Loyola Marymount University, Bo Gathers . . .”

Bo? Wrong. Hank.

Bo would be Bo Kimble, Gathers’ teammate at LMU.

Instead of applause, the announcement drew groans.

Hank Gathers was in attendance to watch his brother, Derrick, CSUN’s leading scorer.

Add Gathers, D.: If he plays to form, expect Gathers to score a lot of points for Northridge tonight in its home game against Bakersfield.

In CSUN’s past four games, over a two-week period, Gathers has been consistently inconsistent. He had two good shooting performances on Thursdays, followed by off nights on Saturdays.

On the Thursdays--against Chapman and Cal Poly Pomona--Gathers averaged 23 points and was a combined 15 for 28, including 11 for 20 from three-point range. In Saturday games--against Cal State Dominguez Hills and UC Riverside--he had a 13-point scoring average and totals of nine for 32 and five for 16.

Youth is served: Glendale Coach Brian Beauchemin would have been satisfied if his team had left the Ventura gym clinging to a semblance of dignity with which it had arrived.

“They’re introducing the Ventura lineup and then they introduce ours,” Beauchemin said. “I’m thinking, holy cow, I hope we can keep this one within fifty.”

Glendale won, 87-80.

The Vaqueros, composed entirely of first-year players, had finally gelled. Or so some of the players thought.

“After the Ventura game I told them, ‘It’s a great high but don’t get too high because there’s always a low,’ ” he said.

He was a bit more profound than he might have hoped.

Glendale proceeded to lose three consecutive games, including one to hapless Santa Barbara, which was 0-6 in Western State Conference play.

“A young team will beat teams you don’t expect them to beat and lose to teams they should beat,” Beauchemin said. “It’s the nature of the beast.”

Points aplenty: Guard Steve deLaveaga ran his streak of scoring in double figures to 77 consecutive games with 34 points for Cal Lutheran against Westmont College on Tuesday. But with only five games remaining, deLaveaga will not reach the NCAA record of 104, set by Lou Stevens of Widener University in Chester, Pa., from 1985-88.

DeLaveaga, a senior, has scored 34 points in each of his past two games. He has scored in double figures in every game since Dec. 9, 1986, when he scored 31 points against Cal Poly Pomona.

More points: Vanessa Hornbuckle, a former Newbury Park High player, set a Cuesta College single-game scoring record with 41 points against College of the Canyons. Hornbuckle is averaging 24.9 points and is second in the Western State Conference in scoring behind Canyons’ Tressie Millender, who averages 25.4 points.

A win the easy way: Moorpark College has picked up a win in basketball by forfeit. Salt Lake City, which defeated the Raiders in an early season tournament game, had to forfeit the win because it used an ineligible player, former Crenshaw High standout John Staggers. Moorpark is 17-10.

Passing fancy: Former Calabasas High quarterback Darren Del’Andrae is following in the footsteps of some outstanding passers at Portland State.

Del’Andrae signed with Portland after setting two national junior college passing records while at College of Marin. The 6-0, 180-pound junior-to-be completed a record 406 passes in 765 attempts for 4,546 yards in his 19-game junior college career.

In his last game for Marin, Del’Andrae attempted a record 75 passes, completing 41.

Del’Andrae is expected to contend for the Vikings’ starting position, left vacant by All-American Chris Crawford, who completed his eligibility last season. Crawford shattered most of the Portland State passing records previously held by Phoenix Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax.

New position: Mark Gieseke, a former Westlake High and College of the Canyons standout, has been moved from the outfield to first base at Cal State Sacramento.

Gieseke, a senior, batted .477 and was an All-American last season.

Staff writers Mike Hiserman, Ralph Nichols, Gary Klein and Sam Farmer contributed to this notebook.