THE COLLEGES : Cal Lutheran’s Tennis Team Suffers Serious Loss on Hockey Rink

A collapsed lung has sidelined Paavo Salmi, Cal Lutheran’s No. 1 tennis player, for the season and has seriously damaged the school’s hopes for an NAIA District 3 championship, Coach Paul Steele said.

Salmi, a junior from Finland, was hurt while playing for the school’s club hockey team in the Pacific Coast Hockey Assn. championship game against Caltech on Monday. However, he failed to realize the severity of his injury and continued to play, scoring his team’s only goal in a 2-1 loss before leaving the game and passing out, Steele said.

Salmi, 25, had hit the winning shot for Cal Lutheran (9-3, 3-0 in district play) in the last doubles match of a 5-4 win over Gustavus Adolphus earlier that day.

Salmi is one of two Cal Lutheran tennis players on the hockey team, in addition to another former tennis player.

Although Steele said his team’s chances of winning the district will “be real sketchy” without Salmi, he added that he will continue to let players pursue outside interests such as hockey.

“This is college, and they’re entitled to do what they want to do,” Steele said. “It’s no fun to live your life in fear of getting hurt.”

Parson’s tale: Stacy Parson, a former All-City Section player from Kennedy High, scored six points Saturday night in the game that sent the second-ranked Stanford women’s basketball team to its first Final Four.

Parson made the last shot, a three-point basket, in Stanford’s 114-87 victory over Arkansas in the regional final in which Stanford set a regional record for points in a game.

Parson backs up fellow senior guard Jennifer Azzi, the Naismith Player of the Year.

Parson, an All-Pacific 10 Conference All-Academic honorable mention, averaged 3.0 points and 1.5 assists in 12.0 minutes per game. Stanford has nominated Parson, who has a 3.25 grade-point average in social psychology, for an NCAA postgraduate scholarship.

Stanford (30-1) will play Virginia today in the semifinals at 4 p.m. in Knoxville, Tenn.

Helping hands: Clipboards flew and chairs were thrown. Chris Johnson, baseball coach at Valley College, couldn’t take any more in a Western State Conference game against Glendale last week.

Valley starter Wayne Schull had faced three batters and given up two hits and a bobbled ground ball to load the bases. The next batter, John Bojanac, responded with a grand slam and the hitter after Bojanac swatted a triple.

That’s when Johnson decided to take things into his own hands.

“I was just trying to shake things up,” Johnson said. “I was only kidding. I hoped it would wake the team up.”

It did. Trailing, 8-3, Valley sent 16 batters to the plate in a 12-run fourth inning en route to a 15-9 victory.

Sales pitch: With freshman John Bushart emerging as a solid starter, Steve Sullivan healthy again, and Scott Sharts almost able to pitch, Cal State Northridge’s much-maligned pitching staff suddenly appears overstocked.

“We haven’t had a stable pitching rotation the whole year,” CSUN Coach Bill Kernen said last week.

However, if the Matadors’ four-game sweep of Pacific and Cal State Sacramento last weekend is any indication, that might be changing.

Sullivan, coming back from elbow surgery, threw a solid three innings before tiring; Bushart, a lanky 6-foot-5 left-hander from Thousand Oaks, went seven innings to pick up his third win without a loss; and Sharts, a 6-6 sophomore, is about ready to return to the hill after resting an elbow inflamed by tendinitis.

Will CSUN’s pitching supply now exceed demand?

Probably not, Kernen said.

“I’d love to have (the rotation) so clogged that we’d have to call Roto-Rooter,” Kernen said. “You want seven or eight guys just fighting their buns off to get in there. The fact that Bushart has thrown a couple of good games is perfect.”

Growing collection: Sasha Vujic holds the Cal State Northridge freshman records in the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters and ranks no worse than 11th on the school’s all-time list in three events, but the sophomore from Burroughs High plans to expand his distance-running horizon.

“I’d really like to try the (3,000-meter) steeplechase,” Vujic said after winning the 1,500 and 5,000 and placing second in the 800 in a quadrangular meet at Northridge on Saturday.

“I never really had much interest in that event before, but I was watching the guys run it and I think I could do pretty well. I definitely plan to give it a try after this season.”

Kirby Lee and staff writers Mike Hiserman, John Ortega and Brendan Healey contributed to this notebook.