COMMUNITY COLLEGE NOTEBOOK : Stanley Building Irvine Valley Program From Ground Up

Phil Stanley, the athletic director at Irvine Valley College, is a man of vision. His sight is so acute, in fact, that he can see things that aren’t there--yet.

When he looks across the Irvine Valley campus, he points out where the locker room, gym and swimming complex will be built during the next few years.

But Stanley also has a sharp focus on the present. After taking the job at Irvine in the summer of 1989, he spent most of his first year visiting area high schools, trying to get athletes to come to Irvine Valley.

Finally, last summer, Stanley was able to make his first solid move toward building the college’s sports program: He hired Martin McGrogan to coach its first sport, men’s soccer.

So far, the results have been beyond all expectations. Irvine Valley is 10-1-6 and 3-1-5 in the Orange Empire Conference, good for third place.

“It was by no accident that we picked soccer to start with,” Stanley said. “This is a great area for it, and we felt we could compete right away . . . but never like this.”

This spring, Irvine Valley will field a women’s softball team, to be coached by Denise Clayton, who was a graduate assistant at Cal State Fullerton last season. And if a available gym can be found, there might even be a men’s volleyball team.

“We would really like to have a full-fledged athletic program here,” Stanley said. “But we have to start small and build up. That is our philosophy here, to do things one at a time with class.”

Irvine Valley plans to add women’s soccer and men’s and women’s cross-country and tennis next season, and plans call for basketball and swimming once construction is complete.

Baseball is a possibility in the distant future, Stanley said, but football isn’t even being considered because of the expense and lack of a campus stadium.

Stanley also had a hand in deciding Irvine Valley’s nickname. In 1985, when the college fielded a soccer team for one season, it was called the Wolverines.

Last summer, when it came time to select a new nickname to accompany the new sports program, Wolverines, Lasers and Ants were among the finalists.

The thinking behind Ants? Well, Irvine Valley is a feeder school for UC Irvine, which is nicknamed the Anteaters, so . . .

The suggestion was quickly thrown out, and the committee settled on Lasers--a name to promote the technical aspects of the school.

Fullerton’s 31-29 loss to Saddleback Saturday dropped the Hornets from second to fifth in the weekly Southland Football Poll.

Bakersfield (6-0), ranked No. 1, has led the poll for five consecutive weeks. Moorpark (5-1) is second, Golden West (5-1) third, Mt. San Jacinto (6-0) fourth and Fullerton (5-1) fifth. El Camino (5-2) is sixth, Santa Monica (5-1) seventh, Antelope Valley (6-0-1) eighth, Rancho Santiago (4-2) ninth and Cerritos (4-2) 10th.

Rancho Santiago baseball Coach Don Sneddon will run a team of 20 community college players from the state this fall in Taiwan. California will represent the United States in the world-wide competition between Nov. 20 and Dec. 3.

Local players participating are: Steve Grack, an outfielder from Rancho Santiago; Doug McConathy, a first baseman from Cypress; Jason Bates, a shortstop from Cypress; Gerad Cawhorn, a third baseman from Golden West, and Tom Wilson, an outfielder from Fullerton.

Community College Notes

Sam Lopez (118 pounds) and Ken Stegall (190), from Cypress, are top-ranked in their weight classes in the latest state wrestling poll. Lopez is 13-0, Stegall 8-0. . . . Cuesta defeated Orange Coast, 12-11, in overtime Saturday to win the Cypress water polo tournament and will most likely move to the top of the next state poll. Golden West, which was the top-ranked team, was upset in the semifinals, 11-8, by Orange Coast. Golden West defeated Long Beach, 10-8, for third. . . . The 14th Rancho Santiago over-the-line baseball tournament is scheduled for Nov. 3. The tournament, which costs $35 per three-man team, is the only organized one in Southern California in which a baseball is used instead of a softball. The tournament takes place on the Rancho Santiago baseball field, which is divided in half so two games can take place at once. For more information call the Rancho Santiago baseball office at 667-3503.