CAL STATE FULLERTON NOTEBOOK : Gymnastics Team Misses the Mark in What Could Be Finale for Titans

Dick Wolfe, Cal State Fullerton men’s gymnastics coach, didn’t bother hanging around the University of Oklahoma gym to see where his team finished in Saturday’s NCAA Western Regional meet.

He didn’t have to, nor did he want to. The quicker he left, Wolfe figured, the quicker that sour taste of a disappointing performance would dissipate.

The Titans, who entered as the fourth-ranked team in the nation and the second-ranked team in the Western Region, finished sixth with a score of 273.20, an average of 9.1 per gymnast per event. A top-four finish would have given the Titans a berth in NCAA championships April 19-21 at Minneapolis.

Wolfe had expected his team to qualify for the nationals but had to settle for only two individual qualifiers, Bill Barham in the all-around and Eli Rodriguez in the high bar and parallel bars.

“I was pretty devastated,” said Wolfe, who is in his 22nd year as Fullerton’s coach.

What made it especially frustrating was that it might have been the Titans’ last NCAA effort. The fate of the program is in the hands of school president Jewel Plummer Cobb, who is yet to act on an Athletics Council recommendation to cut men’s gymnastics because of the athletic department’s financial problems.

If this was the Titans’ swan song, they would have preferred to have gone out on a higher note.

“I really wanted to take this team to the nationals because they deserve to go,” Wolfe said. “But nothing went right Saturday. We didn’t need any magic to make it because we were one of the best teams. We just didn’t do it.”

Shaky start: Fullerton’s problems began a few days before Saturday’s meet when one of its best all-around performers, Roger Donate, injured his ankle in practice. Donate, who has scored as high as 56.0 (9.3 average) in the all-around, was limited to the pommel horse.

The outlook didn’t get any better after the first two events, floor exercise and the horse. Rodriguez, whose top floor routine score is 9.85, fell on his dismount and scored an 8.7. Donate, who has scored 9.6 on the horse, fell twice and scored a 7.4.

“That put too much pressure on the next few guys, and they didn’t come through,” Wolfe said.

There were a few bright spots--Barham’s all-around score of 9.25 and Rodriguez’s scores of 9.75 on the high bar and 9.55 on the parallel bars--but no one had an outstanding day. And to compound matters, the Titans had six-tenths of a point deducted from their team score for going out of order on the vault.

“No one was really dynamite,” Wolfe said. “Everyone contributed to our demise by having at least one miss.”

A scary miss came during Barham’s high-bar routine when the gymnast attempted a “one-armed ginger,” a move in which Barham, after swinging around twice, lets go of the bar and attempts a flip with a half-turn. Barham failed to catch the bar after the move, slammed his face into the bar and fell on his back.

“I stood him up because you have 30 seconds to get back on the bar, and told him to chalk up,” Wolfe said. “He said, ‘Coach, my lip is bleeding.’ He barely got back on the bar and finished with a 9.0. But he can feel like a man for doing it.”

Psyched out: Wolfe didn’t want to use it as an excuse, but he thought the tenuity of the Titans’ program contributed to their poor scores.

The players seemed motivated for the regional and used their coach as a rallying cry. They had T-shirts with a picture of a wolf on front made for the event.

But gymnastics is not like football.

“You can’t just go out there and tear a wall down,” Wolfe said. “It’s hard enough to go out there and concentrate, and then they have all this stuff on their minds. It’s not an excuse, but it sure didn’t help.”

Cuts: A Titan Sports Complex building subcommittee has prioritized its list of deletions from the on-campus stadium to bring the cost of the project back within a $10.2-million budget.

An unexpected, $2.4 million increase in an architect’s estimate had driven the total cost of the project to $12.6 million in March, so officials have trimmed the original plans back to cut $2.3 million.

Phase I deletions include the $800,000 baseball pavilion, which consists of a press box and rest rooms, and interior work on the stadium support building, which includes offices, locker rooms and weight rooms. This will save $500,000.

Another $1 million will be saved by cutting various equipment, athletic field upgrades, and a ground maintenance storage building. The tartan track and tennis courts will be included on the initial project.

“We still feel very confident that we’ll be able to raise enough money to put everything back in,” said Dick Ackerman, a Fullerton City Councilman and member of the building committee.

Walk on the wild side: Most of Shireen Campbell’s pitching performances for the Titan softball team last season were filled with free passes and wild pitches. Campbell started only four games in 1989, walking 14 and striking out eight in 33 innings.

“She threw the ball as hard as anyone, but where the ball was going to go was anyone’s guess,” Fullerton Coach Judi Garman said.

This season, there has been very little guessing. Campbell, a sophomore from Thousand Oaks High School, has been the Titans’ and perhaps the Big West Conference’s most improved player.

She has an 11-4 record with an 0.60 earned-run average and five shutouts. She has walked 32 and struck out 15 in 105 innings, dropping her walk ratio from one every two innings in 1989 to one every three innings this season.

Campbell, who induces most batters to ground out with what Garman calls a “heavy low ball,” has teamed with Ann Van Dortrecht to give Fullerton one of the nation’s best pitching staffs.

“She still walks too many people, but her control is better,” Garman said. “Last year, she was just a thrower. This year, she’s putting the ball where she wants it.”

Titan Notes

The Fullerton softball team won all four games at the University of Hawaii, including Monday night’s doubleheader sweep of the Rainbows, 1-0 and 4-2. The Titans, ranked No. 4 in this week’s NCAA poll, improved to 34-9 overall, 14-3 in the Big West, and increased their winning streak to 10. Ann Van Dortrecht earned both pitching victories with a three-hitter with seven strikeouts in the first game and relieving Shireen Campbell with three hitless innings in the second game.