Lady Toros Search for Winning Formula

Cal State Dominguez Hills opens its California Collegiate Athletic Assn. women’s volleyball season Tuesday, days short of a dubious anniversary.

The Lady Toros started the week with a 3-6 record and last won a CCAA match on Oct. 19, 1987, defeating Cal State Los Angeles, 3-1. Since then, Dominguez Hills has lost 30 consecutive league matches.

Sadly, despite major improvements made by second-year Coach Nancy Fortner, this year’s outcome could be a repeat of the past three seasons.

Even Fortner, charged by Athletic Director Dan Guerrero with rebuilding a program that was all but dead, admits it will be an uphill struggle. Her goal: “I hope that we can take some games off some of these teams this year.”

That’s games, as in 15 points. Not matches. The NCAA ranked Dominguez Hills sixth out of eight teams in the Southwest recently. Ahead of the Lady Toros were the other five CCAA teams, including top-rated Riverside, which plays host to Dominguez Hills on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

This is a school that considers it a victory to win a game or two. In CCAA play, Dominguez Hills won only one game last year and that came against Cal State L.A., which, according to Fortner “has improved a lot this season over last.”

The Lady Toros have shown promise in two tournaments, however, taking single games from defending national champion Bakersfield and Cal Poly Pomona, ranked second in the region.

“We have a new attitude here,” Fortner said. “Things are more positive, the kids are stronger and they come from good, strong club backgrounds.”

The near demise of volleyball at Dominguez Hills has been especially painful for Fortner. In 1978, she coached the Lady Toros to their only conference title. But a year later, after a 13-14 record, she became the coach at Loyola Marymount. In 1986 the Lady Lions were champions of the West Coast Athletic Conference and opened the playoffs with an upset victory over powerhouse UCLA.

Then Fortner, frustrated that Loyola would not give her a full-time teaching position, walked away from volleyball altogether. She worked odd jobs and drove a bus for a retirement home. When Coach Jennifer Gorecki resigned at Dominguez Hills in 1988, Fortner returned to coaching.

In Fortner’s absence, however, Dominguez Hills struggled. It has had only one winning season since she left in 1979, a 15-14 mark in 1984. Going back to 1986, the team has lost 35 of 36 CCAA matches. You can count the number of games the team has won on a single hand.

Down the line, however, Guerrero sees improvement.

“In two or three years, Nancy will have done the things necessary to make this program more competitive,” he said.

Fortner, hired in July of 1989, had no time to recruit players for last year’s team, so she took what she could get--leftovers from a pair of teams that lost 53 matches and some walk-on freshmen. Although Dominguez Hills was 7-22 overall, the number of victories was better than either of the two previous seasons. A total of 23 team or individual records were broken in 1989.

Quite an accomplishment, points out Guerrero, for a team that was basically thrown together.

However, sports information director Kevin Gilmore adds: “If you look at most of our records against the records of other schools, our records don’t even come close.”

Discrepancies in performances point out that even the best efforts in things like kills, digs and aces at Dominguez Hills fall short of those of other players in the CCAA. For example, the school record for most kills in a season is only 205, an average of only four per match, although it has stood since 1983. The season record at Pomona, a middle-echelon team, is 486. The Dominguez Hills record for blocked kills is 28. At Pomona it is 124.

Three marks have already been set this season and Fortner said more are on the way.

Freshman setter Jeanna Price of Lake Elsinore has broken the school set assist record twice. Sophomore hitter Gale Derricott of Riverside recently broke the school record for match kills.

“Jeanna has a good work ethic. She has helped us get rid of that (losing) attitude from the past,” Fortner said.

According to Fortner, Derricott could develop into one of the top Division II players in the nation.

“Her club team folded so she didn’t get a lot of recognition,” Fortner said. “My timing in signing her was right. She was just overlooked by everyone else.”

Sophomore hitter Angela Hamer, who missed most of last season after she was injured in an auto accident, is the heart and soul of the team, according to Fortner.

“She has good fighting spirit,” Fortner said. “She’s not afraid to attack or go after any ball. She’s our team leader.”

Also playing well is sophomore Lourdes Estrada of Wilmington, a utility player last season who has moved into the starting mid-hitter spot.

Six-foot Julie Berthiaume, who holds the school record for most blocked solos in a match (5), is the only senior on the team. She has been rotated with defensive specialist Michele Newman, a junior transfer from El Camino College. Melissa Lynch, a junior transfer from Cerritos College, has started most of the year at a hitter position.

Said Fortner: “Realistically, we won’t be on top this year . . . But I hope that in the next three or four years that at least we will be in the middle, rather than on the bottom.

Guerrero is confident that will be the case. Anything Fortner does will be an improvement over past performances, he said.