THE COLLEGES : CLU’s Brenda Lee Plays the Part of Multisport Star to the Letter

The Royals have Bo; the Regals have Brenda.

Forget about Bo Jackson’s two-sport exploits, senior Brenda Lee performs in four sports at Cal Lutheran.

Barring injury, Lee will have earned nine Cal Lutheran varsity letters by the end of the school year. Four letters will have been earned in basketball--she starts at off-guard and averaged about 16 points a game last season; three in softball--she is a reserve infielder; one in track--she won the District 3 triple jump title as a freshman; and one in volleyball.

Lee, an outside hitter, decided to help out the volleyball team when Coach Carla DuPuis advertised for athletes after the roster was reduced to two players when two others quit the team.

“I would hate to see a program not continued because of a lack of people, and I thought I could help them,” Lee said. “I love activity. There’s nothing like a good sweat.”

Lee now is practicing for both basketball and volleyball.

All signals go: Despite the earthquake that rumbled through the Bay Area on Tuesday, the Cal Lutheran football team’s game at Santa Clara is still scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday at Buck Shaw Stadium.

The Santa Clara campus sustained minimal damage, and the stadium is reportedly structurally sound.

Off the pace: Don Strametz, coach of the Cal State Northridge men’s cross-country team, was less than thrilled with the Matadors’ performance in Saturday’s Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Invitational.

Northridge, ranked sixth in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Division II going in, finished 10th with 269 points, ahead of ninth-ranked UC Riverside (294) and 11th-ranked UC Davis (357).

However, the Matadors finished well behind the host Mustangs, who, as the second-ranked team in Division II, placed sixth with 192 points.

“We went up there thinking we could give (San Luis Obispo) a good run,” Strametz said. “But we just didn’t run well as a team. Richard Gitahi ran a very good race and Jeff Gilkey ran well, but nobody else ran particularly well.”

Gilkey, a sophomore, and Gitahi, a freshman, were the Matadors’ Nos. 3 and 4 runners last week. They finished 74th and 81st, respectively, but the rest of the Matador squad didn’t perform as well as it had in winning the UC Riverside Invitational two weeks earlier.

“We did not handle the pressure of being ranked high well,” Strametz said. “We did not handle the week off well. We were stale.”

Northridge had moved from 15th to sixth in the rankings based on its victory in the UC Riverside Invitational.

Bonds redux: Cal Lutheran quarterback Dan Nagelmann stirred memories of former Kingsmen great Tom Bonds with a 239-yard, two-touchdown performance against Cal State Hayward on Saturday. Nagelmann also scrambled for 20 yards in eight carries.

Bonds, whose last season was 1987, put his personal stamp on the record book during his four-year career. An All-American selection, he holds Cal Lutheran records in career passing yardage and career total offense and nearly a dozen others.

In his weekly press conference last week, Cal Lutheran Coach Bob Shoup assessed the post-Bonds era.

“Now we kind of know who we are, what our limitations are and what we’re capable of doing,” Shoup said. “We’ve moved out of having all our quarterbacks be a kind of pale imitation of Tom Bonds. Our offense doesn’t rely on one person.”

Despite Nagelmann’s performance, Shoup remains enamored of his three-quarterback rotation of Nagelmann, Eddie Hoffman and Tim Zeddies. Nagelmann is the best thrower, but Shoup likes Zeddies’ leadership and Hoffman’s running ability.

“The unpredictability gives us a whole new dimension,” Shoup said. “I think it’s working for us. I think we’ve found the best of what we’re able to do.”

Land rovers: While opponents concentrate on Cal Lutheran’s passing, the Kingsmen continue to surprise with their running game.

Cal Lutheran netted 159 yards on the ground against Hayward, lifting its six-game season total to more than 1,000 yards.

Dean Henderson, CLU’s leading rusher, has 363 yards--more than 100 yards better than the leading ground gainer last season.

Diamond in the rough: There haven’t been many highlights for Cal Lutheran’s 0-17 volleyball team, but that hasn’t kept Jenifer Larson from shining.

One of only two returning players, Larson, a senior, has led the Regals in kills every game. Larson, the team captain, ranks sixth in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics District 3 with a .322 hitting percentage.

Right on track: Occidental cross-country runner Laurie Schuster is on pace to win the SCIAC individual title.

Schuster, a senior from Danville, Calif., has won all four SCIAC dual-meet races. Not coincidentally, the women’s team is also unbeaten heading into its final conference race Saturday against Caltech and Whittier in the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena.

Gary Klein and staff writers Mike Hiserman, John Ortega and Brendan Healey contributed to this notebook.