UCLA’s Currey Remains in Running at Chapman

Chapman College officials expect to make an announcement regarding their athletic director vacancy today, and Dave Currey, assistant football coach at UCLA, apparently is still in the running.

Currey, who visited with Chapman coaches and officials Thursday, said Monday he is still discussing the position with administrators and that he may visit the Orange campus again today.

Of the remaining candidates, two--Kay Don, an athletic administrator at Cal State Long Beach, and David Adams, former Akron football coach and athletic director--said Monday that they were no longer in the running. A third, Joseph Biedron, athletic director of Monmouth College in West Long Branch, N.J., declined to comment.

Chapman has been searching for an athletic director since Bob Boyd resigned in December. Boyd remains at Chapman as the men’s basketball coach.

Knight golf: Indiana basketball Coach Bobby Knight and his wife, Karen, spent a few days last week at the Palm Desert home of Bob Boyd and his wife, Betty.

Boyd said he and Knight became close friends on a 21-day trip to Asia and the South Pacific in the ‘60s.

Boyd, who often invites friends from his 28 years of college coaching to visit and play golf, said he and Knight “talked a lot of basketball” and played a lot of golf--72 holes in two days.

“He wore me out,” Boyd said.

Boyd recently played with Alabama Birmingham Coach Gene Bartow, and Alabama Coach Wimp Sanderson, whose team practiced at Chapman before its loss to Loyola Marymount in the NCAA Western Regional, will visit in October.

Still searching: In what apparently will be the final step in Christ College Irvine’s search for a basketball coach, the four finalists--Greg Marshall, an assistant at Westmont College; Ron Newton, an assistant at Seattle University, Tim O’Brien, head coach at Estancia High School, and Cliff Thompson, head coach at Milwaukee Lutheran High--will run a practice with the team.

O’Brien will direct his practice today in Christ College’s gym, but the other candidates will have to hold court elsewhere as the gym will be occupied much of the week to prepare for the end-of-the-year athletic awards banquet, which will be held later in the week.

The “final four candidates” have been culled from the list of seven “final candidates” the college released last week. Each has been through a full day of interviews, but administrators want to be sure the person hired is competent for the faculty or staff position the coach will also fill.

“We’re trying to kill two birds with one stone,” said Amanda Houlton, Christ College’s sports information director. “Our first priority is to get a good coach, but the academic departments don’t want to get stuck with someone who is a poor teacher.”

Get out of town: Christ College Irvine’s baseball team is at Cal Baptist today for a one-game playoff to determine the Golden State Athletic Conference’s representative in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics District 3 championship.

The two teams, playing for the chance to go to Cal Lutheran for a best-of-three series Friday and if necessary Saturday, tied for the conference championship with 8-4 records and split their four-game series. Cal Baptist is today’s host because it won three of four games against the third-place team, Azusa Pacific, and Christ College won only two against the Cougars.

Conference President Carroll Land, also athletic director at Point Loma Nazarene, said that even though this tiebreaking procedure isn’t in writing, it has been used in a number of other sports and therefore has precedence.

But Christ College Coach Mike McGuire is upset because he says the conference’s by-laws require a decision by the executive committee, which wasn’t consulted.

“We’ll live with it,” McGuire said. “I’m just hoping my players are just as upset with the site as I am. Maybe they’ll play a little bit harder.”

College Division Notes

Softball pitcher Lisa Merenda, who will start for Christ College Irvine against Cal Baptist today, was named District 3 pitcher of the week for April 26. Merenda, a freshman from Hemet, has a 16-7 record and an 0.62 earned-run average. . . . Mater Dei guard Jason Quinn, who last week signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Southern California College, averaged six points and seven assists a game for the Monarchs, who won the state Division II championship. “Jason’s stats are not too impressive, but when you lead a team to the state championship, you are doing something right,” SCC Coach Bill Reynolds said. . . . Three Pacific Christian College coaches have resigned. The college is seeking replacements for John Squires, former men’s soccer coach; Chris Dodson, former women’s volleyball coach, and Chris Marshall, former men’s volleyball coach.