Turnaround Hopes : Nancy Fortner...

Brilliant sunlight burned off the overcast shrouding the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills, sending shards of light through a field house window and across Nancy Fortner’s desk.

Fortner, the third women’s volleyball coach here in the past five years, squinted, wrinkling her nose. It was early in the morning and the room glowed, unlike the sport she was rehired to turn around. A decade ago she coached a successful program here. But she, like the sun, found things in a fog.

“There is a certain attitude that needs to be changed,” she said off the top. “You get into a mode where you get used to losing, and then you can’t win. I think I can build a program here, but it will take time.”

In the South Bay, where volleyball flourishes on the beaches, in public schools and private clubs, the Dominguez Hills women’s program has not been a shining star. Fortner is supposed to lead women’s volleyball out of its malaise, a not-so-bright prospect even for a woman who professes to like a good challenge.

The Lady Toros have had only one winning season since moving to the Division II level in 1982. This year, with few recruits available because Fortner was hired in midsummer, Dominguez Hills is 7-13 overall and once again winless in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Fortner was hired as part of a master plan by Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, who wants to build Dominguez Hills into a national power on the Division II level. In just over a year Guerrero has taken a personal hand in recruiting athletes; he has hired four new coaches, a sports information director and an athletic fund-raiser.

As a member of the 1964 and 1968 U.S. Olympic volleyball teams, Fortner fits nicely into Guerrero’s plans. She is internationally known, a former All-American at Pepperdine. She competes on the senior tour of the U.S. Volleyball Assn., and her coaching record is proven: a fourth-place finish nationally among small schools at Dominguez Hills in 1978 and Loyola Marymount’s only conference title and appearance in the Division I playoffs in 1986.

But more important, says Guerrero, she brings a ray of hope to the university because she is a winner: “She has a reputation for being an outstanding person, and she has instilled in her the work ethic that we want here at Dominguez Hills.”

Despite her successful record, Fortner has never held a full-time coaching job until now.

She was the first volleyball coach Dominguez Hills had when the program began in 1973, but was passed over for a full-time faculty position here in 1979.

She moved into another part-time role at Loyola, where the upgrading of her status to full time was promised but never delivered. She gave the school an ultimatum in 1986 after the Lions won the West Coast Athletic Conference title, then upset UCLA in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. When her request to be hired full time was rejected, she resigned to go into the private sector. Her ability to make a living at the sport she loved had temporarily come to an end.

Actually, she and her husband, Ron, the women’s basketball coach at Pepperdine, hadn’t been doing so well at making a living at all. Their personal debts mounted each season that Nancy did not bring home a full-time salary. Ron had to take a second job driving an airport shuttle van at night. They had to sell their San Pedro home.

“It’s a very unsettling feeling to be in debt, very stressful,” Fortner said.

Her bright blue eyes twinkled as she squinted against the bright sunlight. They’re not out of the financial thicket yet, she said. “It’s scary.”

Fortner’s inability to financially capitalize on a sport that had been a major part of her life left deep emotional scars because she allowed herself to get close to each of her teams.

“She is very motherly to her athletes,” said Loyola Athletic Director Brian Quinn.

And dedicated, according to friends and relatives.

“She is a very loyal person, wherever she worked,” explained Ron. “She never really wanted to leave Dominguez Hills the first time.”

Nancy took the disappointment at Loyola very hard.

“Where I’m from, you work hard, do a good job, and they should reward you for that,” Fortner said. “That’s basic.”

Fortner built the Lions into a Division I conference winner with virtually no financial support from the school’s administration. She asked Quinn to create a full-time position for her. She felt she deserved that because of what she had done for the school’s image. But her request was just too much for a tight-fisted administration to deal with.

Said Quinn: “At that point in our history we were a small school; then overnight we moved into the warfare on the Division I Level. . . . At that time the university could not provide (full-time) employment (for Fortner).”

Despite urging by Quinn, the Rev. James N. Loughran, president of Loyola, vetoed a request to create a full-time women’s volleyball coaching position.

“The funds just weren’t there,” Quinn explained.

The same thing was becoming evident to the Fortners each time they sat down to pay their bills. Nancy, rebuffed by Loyola, said the university did not care about women’s athletics.

“All (the Loyola administration wants you to do each year) is to continue to be contenders,” Fortner said of the university’s women’s program. “The kids deserve something more tangible, like more scholarship money. It was very frustrating. I was traipsing from gym to gym, and for what they were paying me it just wasn’t worth it anymore.”

Fortner resigned by phone.

“I remember the conversation with Brian,” she said. “I was holding the phone to my ear and telling him, ‘Well, Brian, if that’s the way it’s going to be, then I won’t be back,’ ” and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m not really saying this, am I?’ ”

Loyola’s record under Fortner was 144-89. Since her departure, the school is 31-47. Ironically, Loyola recently created a full-time position to handle both men’s and women’s volleyball.

Fortner’s coaching successes didn’t help her land the full-time position at Dominguez Hills the first time around in 1979, either. She capped a six-year stint with an 18-6 record and guided the Lady Toros to the league championship of the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference, part of the now-defunct Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

The team finished fourth nationally that season. Fortner thought that was good enough to have earned a full-time position. But when the school opened the job, she was passed over. The university said it had been overwhelmed by applicants from around the country, many with previous full-time experience. That made Fortner expendable.

In essence, she said: “I was fired.”

In retrospect, not getting the two positions were “the best things that happened to me,” she said.

But not without rough spots. Although Ron and Nancy have a 12-year old daughter and have been married for 15 years now, coaching pressures back then complicated financial woes. The couple had marital problems and separated shortly after Nancy left Dominguez Hills for Loyola.

“It was a difficult period in my life,” she said.

Fortner has never liked recruiting wars. “It goes against my grain,” she said.

Those who know her say her distaste for recruiting probably cost her the Dominguez Hills job the first time around. Now, ironically, her success will be measured in great part by her ability to attract top-flight players to a school that has had difficulty selling itself to the volleyball community in the past.

Said Ron, who has experienced recruiting wars at Pepperdine: “Nancy will have to sell this program. She’ll have to recruit, convince people that this program can win.”

Loyola’s Quinn agrees.

“Dominguez Hills, that’s a tough recruiting market in the past. It’s a good school, and if they have the funds, well, the South Bay is loaded with talent. There are a lot of (third-string) players out there (that will do well at a place like Dominguez Hills).

“Nancy can get these kids,” he continued. “But it won’t be easy. I think the kids will wait (for a couple of years) and see how she does.”

Guerrero is confident that Fortner can turn the program around.

“Immediately, she has brought a greater sense of local autonomy to the program,” he said.

Training regimens under Fortner “are intense,” according to Guerrero. “She is focused, and it’s strictly business.”

Getting down to business on the volleyball court, contends Fortner, is what she likes to do best.

“I’m good with people one on one. When you are recruiting, you go to these tournaments and you watch them play. It’s like a game of chess. You make a move and they make a move. I try to not let it bother me.”

“I think Nancy has worked hard to learn how to recruit,” said Guerrero, who predicted that “it’s not inconceivable that in the next few years we could be nationally ranked and playing for a championship in our conference.”

Fortner’s track record seems to assure that, even though she was not hired until late July when even third-string prospects had committed to other schools. In fact, Guerrero did most of the recruiting for this year’s team.

Despite key injuries, the Lady Toros have already matched last year’s win total.

“The team has really come a long way,” Guerrero said.

Nancy Fortner was driving a shuttle bus and working with the elderly at a retirement home near her San Pedro residence when she heard about the opening at Dominguez Hills by chance. Todd Corman, the women’s basketball coach at Loyola, stopped by her house one night to drop off game films for Ron. He had seen the job posting from Dominguez Hills and he was curious if Nancy had applied.

“I wasn’t that interested when he told me about it,” she said.

That night second thoughts haunted her as she slept.

“I woke up the next morning and thought that maybe it would be good to apply. I went to church and talked it over with my pastor, and he prayed for me.”

Looking back, said Nancy, two years away from athletics was difficult.

“Volleyball,” she said, “had been my entire life.”

Ron noticed Nancy’s mood swings.

“She would never admit it to me, but I think she missed coaching. In that first year, I think she had second thoughts.”

Two seasons later, she found herself questioning her ability.

“I didn’t know if I would be able to come back at first, to adjust,” she said. “But I did. Coaching gets in your blood.”

Working with the elderly taught her a lot.

“I became part of their family, and they became part of mine. They would tell me, ‘Don’t ever grow old.’ I see kids with ability taking so much of it for granted. Up at the home . . . those people know. . . . A lot of them are not healthy.

“There is so much more people can do if they just try a little harder, push themselves a little. Athletics is doing things you’ve never done before, going beyond the average.”

It is a tenet she says she will preach at Dominguez Hills.

The Toro Gym was nearly empty the other night as Dominguez Hills dropped a three-game decision to Cal Poly Pomona, one of five nationally ranked team the Toros must face in the CCAA. It was not an easy loss for Fortner, since Dominguez Hills was even 13-all in the first game before it made two mental mistakes that enabled Pomona to gain the momentum.

She had drilled the team hard for this one, the conference opener. Before the game, she took her players into a corner of the gym, removed her shoes, and, dressed in slacks and blouse, drove spike after spike at them with a closed fist.

As the game progressed, Ron, seated behind the Lady Toro bench, wondered aloud: “This job here may just be Nancy’s biggest challenge yet.”

Nancy called a timeout as Pomona ran away with the second game. Ron, watching nervously, said: “I think she missed coaching. The challenge is good for her. Nancy is very competitive.”

The game ended in Pomona’s lopsided favor. Ron, wriggling in his seat, still managed an upbeat tone.

“In some respects,” he said, searching for a ray of hope, “this Dominguez Hills thing is the best thing that has ever happened to us”--a statement that his wife had echoed several days before on that brightly lighted morning.