Loyola Learned to Roar in the ‘80s : Men Cagers Lead the Way, Baseball Team Adds 39 Wins

The 1980s saw unprecedented growth in the Loyola Marymount athletic department, and the decade is ending on an impressive upswing for the featured Lions programs.

Especially over the last four school years, the Loyola men’s basketball team has the West Coast Athletic Conference’s best record, 79-42 (compared to 66-55 by archrival Pepperdine), and three postseason appearances, and the baseball team is nearly 100 games above .500 at 173-78, a .689 winning percentage (Pepperdine is a nearly identical 174-76 over the same period).

The women’s basketball team has shown steady improvement and the volleyball program may have finally turned the corner this year. And last week the women’s crew team capped the year by winning a national title in the lightweight four shell.

Moreover, the school’s highest-profile team, Paul Westhead’s Lions, won the WCAC Tournament, reached the NCAA basketball regionals for the second straight year and appeared on national television a handful of times while setting a national scoring record. And the baseball team reached the NCAA playoffs for the third time in four years.

The Lions aren’t a household name yet, but people finally know where they are. For the school year, give them a B. Said Athletic Director Brian Quinn: “All things considered, it was a good year. Not a great year, but a good year. There were always things you could have done better, but we had a good athletic year.”

As the 1980s draw to a close, the Lions have a modern gym and administrative/training facilities and a baseball stadium that were not there a decade ago. And Quinn and the current coaches have stabilized the major scholarship sports--men’s and women’s basketball and baseball.

On the brink of the 1990s, Quinn hopes to funnel some of that new-found support and enthusiasm to the sports that are still suffering--men’s and women’s volleyball, softball, tennis and soccer. Quinn acknowledges that he has had trouble raising funds for low-profile programs that haven’t been notably successful. But five years ago baseball and basketball fell into that category. Now basketball often sells out and big baseball games draw good crowds, and both sports have healthy booster groups.

“Winning takes care of a lot of things,” Quinn said. “You’ll see a lot of people at our volleyball matches in a few years. As our only (scholarship) sport in the fall, women’s volleyball could be a good gate for us. It’s a great spectator sport. In L.A. if you don’t win people don’t come. My job became much easier when we started winning (in basketball). My first year trying to sell season tickets, people said, ‘You’re crazy.’ Now season tickets are booming and the checks are flowing.”

The School Year Past:

Men’s basketball was again the big story as Westhead produced a second-straight 20-win season and the team broke nearly every NCAA scoring record, including the wildest scoring game in NCAA history, a 181-150 victory over U.S. International. Junior center Hank Gathers led the nation in scoring and rebounding and junior guard Jeff Fryer had a big year, averaging 23 points. Junior guard Bo Kimble had a 40-point game but battled a knee injury most of the season.

The baseball team won 39 games, including two victories in the NCAA Regionals as first-year Coach Chris Smith made a successful debut.

The women’s basketball team had its most successful season under Coach Todd Corman, winning 17 games and battling for the WCAC title.

The men’s volleyball team was competitive under new Coach Mike Normand despite its 8-19 record. The Lions defeated Pepperdine for the first time, had victories over several other ranked squads and were rated in the Top 20. The undermanned women’s volleyball team struggled under Coach George Yamashita, who resigned after the season. Both teams are now being coached by Normand.

The soccer and softball teams, virtually made up of walk-ons, made strides. Another non-scholarship team, however, went all the way: The four-woman lightweight crew of Mary Huffman, Katie Burke, Kellie Farley, Julie Hackworth and coxswain Jessica Perez was champion of the Pacific Coast Rowing Assn. and the nationals last week in Wisconsin. They’re the second female crew to win a national title at Loyola this decade.

1989-90: A Preview:

With Gathers, Kimble, Fryer and three other key players returning, this should be another high-scoring basketball team that will be seen on television several times and should battle Pepperdine for the WCAC title. The Waves also return a solid core of veterans.

The baseball team loses several key players to graduation and the pro draft but returns several starters and has several outstanding incoming freshmen. “Chris (Smith) had an unreal recruiting year. I think the baseball team will get even better,” Quinn said.

The women’s basketball team loses only one starter to graduation and returns several all-conference selections--guards Kristen Bruich and Lynn Flanagan and center Tricia Gibson. Corman feels he had a good recruiting class.

Quinn hopes the next step up will be taken by the volleyball program. Normand had an immediate impact on the competitive quality of the men’s team, which competes in the nation’s dominant conference, the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. Quinn and several others close to the program said outstanding recruits have shown interest in the men’s program. Normand was hired too late to do much recruiting for the women’s team, which does not appear to have deep talent coming back, having graduated the team’s all-conference players, Seham Khalaf and Leslie Wohlford.

“The women’s volleyball we need to get cranked up again,” Quinn said. “My major goal is to continue our success in basketball and baseball, continue to improve women’s basketball . . . and keep knocking away at soccer and softball (which don’t have scholarships) and get successful. And I hope to improve our crowds. That’s possible.”

Women’s sports have made strides at Loyola, with the volleyball and basketball teams upgrading to Division I status and becoming competitive in the late ‘80s. Those are the sports targeted for continued support, partly because there is limited scholarship funding and partly because, Quinn said, “those are the WCAC showcase sports. We have to be competitive.”

Down the Road: the 1990s

Quinn’s fund-raising hopes--he would eventually like to give enough scholarships in volleyball, women’s basketball, even tennis and soccer to match most of the teams in the WCAC--have not materialized and the school administration declined to hire a full-time athletics fund-raiser, a position many rival schools staff. So many Loyola teams may continue to stride unsteadily against better-funded teams.

“We haven’t had much luck (fund raising),” Quinn said. “Most of what we raise helps operationally--it goes to the programs for equipment, recruiting, travel expenses. My goal is (still) a development program. There’s still a real untapped source out there.”

Quinn expects Loyola’s best funded teams--men’s basketball and baseball--to continue to be competitive in the conference and nationally. One sure bet for the 1990s: As long as Westhead is at Loyola, his name will continue to be rumored for nearly every NBA and college coaching opening, whether he is interested or not. Westhead’s presence gives the Lions and the conference stature.

As Loyola has grown lately, so has the West Coast Athletic Conference. Though the WCAC has gotten little respect in the national ratings, six of the eight WCAC men’s basketball teams had winning records for the decade--the conference’s overall total was 1,185-971--and WCAC baseball teams have more than held their own against the Pac-10 and Big West conferences lately. Quinn said most of the schools have upgraded their schedules and continue to bring in quality coaches like Paul Landreaux, the former El Camino College basketball coach who was recently hired at St. Mary’s.

In fact, Quinn said, the WCAC may have outgrown its name. The athletic directors are considering streamlining the conference’s name, possibly to something along the lines of the West Coast Conference (WCC), to end confusion with the Western Athletic Conference (WAC).

“As a conference we’ve tried to improve our image and we talk about it all the time,” Quinn said. “We’re not allowing more than one non-Division I (basketball) game in the future. We’ll continue to look for ways to improve our basketball tournament, and we’re always discussing TV programming and corporate sponsors.”

Somewhere down the road he would also like to see UCLA and USC reappear on the basketball schedule. With Gathers and Kimble returning next season, the basketball team again should be an appealing television draw. “With our style we’re made for TV,” Quinn said.

Meanwhile, Quinn said, Loyola is doing well for a small parochial school that stresses academics as much as athletics:

“We’d like to do well (athletically), but we still want our kids to be students, graduate, get good jobs and make it in the world. You can’t hide here. I think our priorities are straight in the conference. At meetings we talk about things like missed class time.

“It’s still difficult to get the blue-chip kid out of high school to come to a school our size. I think their heads are turned by the megaconferences. But I’ll tell you one thing: This is a great place--a great place to go to school, a great place to work. Athletically we’ve got things going really well.”