CAL STATE FULLERTON NOTEBOOK : Crash Wrecks Her Softball Season

When they loaded Kristine (Tiny) Glomboske into the ambulance, they laid her side by side with the man who had ended her softball season before it began.

Glomboske was returning home alone around midnight on Oct. 4 when, she said, a driver ran a stop sign and hit her car broadside near the intersection of Imperial Highway and Valley View in La Mirada. The impact sent her car over the curb and up an embankment, rolling back down.

Glomboske, then preparing for her senior season at Cal State Fullerton, suffered a laceration to her head and is still struggling with back injuries. As they loaded her into the ambulance that night, Glomboske says, the driver of the other car was confused and talking loudly.

“I was mad at him,” Glomboske said. “I said, ‘Hey, quiet down.’ Those weren’t my exact words either.”

As fourth-ranked Fullerton opened its softball season Tuesday, four months after the accident, Glomboske sat and watched. After an impressive freshman season in 1987, Glomboske has struggled with knee trouble. This was to be the year she returned to the form that she showed as a freshman from El Dorado High School.

“It’s kind of tough,” said Glomboske, who had undergone her “third or fourth” knee operation less than three weeks before the car accident. “I figured this was my last year, and I wanted everyone to know, regardless of the knee, that I could come back and play like I once played.”

Instead, she is “99% sure to redshirt,” Coach Judi Garman said. “Unless she has a miraculous recovery, she is so far behind I don’t see how she has a chance.”

Glomboske said her neck makes a cracking sound every time she looks to her left and her shoulder muscles and lower back are sore.

The injuries also have slowed the rehabilitation of her knee. At her rehab sessions several times weekly, she is lifting only five pounds with her left leg.

“They say with back injuries, it’s so different,” Glomboske said. “Sometimes you’ll be fine in a few months and sometimes it takes forever.”

As of now, it looks as if Glomboske will be watching all season. She went to a recent practice and did nothing but feed the pitching machine. After a few hours, she was exhausted. Even to Glomboske, it doesn’t seem likely she’ll be back this season.

“The doctors don’t think so,” she said. “The therapists don’t think so.”

An outfielder, Glomboske batted .289 as a freshman, driving in 28 runs, tying the second-best total on the team. After her knee injury in the middle of her sophomore year, she batted .220 last year and sat out 17 games.

The softball team, led by returning All-Americans Missy Coombes and Carey Hess, faces a challenge early in the Big West/Pacific 10 Showdown at the Titan Softball Complex Saturday and Sunday. The other teams: No. 15 Arizona State, No. 11 Cal Poly Pomona, No. 2 Fresno State, No. 5 Oregon and defending national champion and top-ranked UCLA.

Fullerton lost only two starters from last season’s 47-15 team, but one was their leading pitcher, Anjie Bryant, a 25-game winner who is academically ineligible.

The No. 1 starter’s role falls to Ann Van Dortrecht, who was 19-8 with an earned-run average of 0.90. The only other pitchers on the team are Shireen Campbell, a sophomore who had a 3-1 record, and freshman Tracy Tousley, who like infielder Jill Matyuch, also plays basketball and will not play softball full time until later in the season.

Hess, an outfielder who batted .409 last season, and Coombes, a first baseman who hit .359, are the standouts. Garman also is excited about infielder Charlotte Wiley, a transfer from Contra Costa College who, Garman says, has power.

Huck Flener, Fullerton’s No. 1 starting pitcher, rarely fails to draw attention, and not just because of his statistics.

Flener, who is 1-0 this season after a victory over Cal Poly Pomona and a no-decision Sunday against Stanford, already holds a Big West Conference record--winning percentage.

Flener, a junior, is 14-2 in his career. Credit the record to a lot of good pitching--and a knack for ending up with a no-decision. Flener had a 9-1 record last season--and seven no-decisions.

Cedric Ceballos, mentioned in this week’s Sports Illustrated as one of five little-televised, big-time basketball players in the country, was named co-Big West player of the week. Sharing the honor with Ceballos is UC Santa Barbara’s Eric McArthur--one of the other players on the magazine’s list.

Ceballos averaged 28.7 points and 13.7 rebounds a game last week while shooting 58% from the field in three games.

McArthur averaged 20 points, 18 rebounds and four blocked shots in three games.

Titan Notes

The men’s gymnastics team is ranked third in the nation by average meet score. The Titans are behind Ohio State and Nebraska. The women’s team is ranked sixth in the nation, behind Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana State. Heather Thomas, who has a 9.75 average in the floor exercise, is tied for first in the nation in that event. Thomas is also tied for 13th in the all-around. Teammates Stacey Harris, ranked 10th in the floor exercise, and Stacy Fowlkes, 17th in the same event, are also among the national leaders. . . . Wayne Williams, a sophomore on the men’s basketball team, is fourth on Fullerton’s all-time assist list with 304. Leon Wood is the leader with 744.