CAL STATE FULLERTON NOTEBOOK : Gymnastics Team Left With Little but Potential

They slashed his salary in half and they’re trimming his team’s budget, but life goes on for Dick Wolfe, who this week begins his 23rd season as the Cal State Fullerton men’s gymnastics coach.

“I still feel betrayed by the whole system and how it works, but I’m paying my bills and coaching my team, same as I did before,” Wolfe said. “It doesn’t feel right, but I’m getting it done.”

Wolfe spent much of last spring in limbo, wondering whether former school president Jewel Plummer Cobb would approve an athletics council recommendation to cut the men’s gymnastic and men’s and women’s fencing programs.

The programs were eventually saved, but not without concessions. Wolfe’s $60,000 salary was cut to $33,000, and his budget for scholarships, usually $30,000, was cut to $25,000 this year and will be reduced to $5,000 next year, Wolfe said.

The proceedings of last spring had a profound effect on recruiting--Wolfe couldn’t guarantee prospects that he’d have a team, so for the first time ever, he opens a season with no new gymnasts. But that doesn’t mean the cupboard is bare.

Despite his bitter feelings toward the school administration, Wolfe is excited about this year’s team, which he says has the potential to reach the NCAA nationals.

The Titans lost only one gymnast (Eli Rodriguez) from the 1990 team, which placed sixth in the West Regional, and have a strong nucleus of three seniors: Bill Barham, Amir Kadury and Diego Lopez.

Barham, who qualified as an all-around competitor at the 1990 nationals, will miss the team’s first two meets, including this weekend’s Spartan Invitational at San Jose State, while he makes up a class. Wolfe said he’ll become academically eligible for the Jan. 25 meet against UCLA.

Barham is the team’s best all-around gymnast, and Wolfe says Kadury and Lopez have improved over last year. Fullerton should be especially strong on high-bar, where Kadury scored a 9.85 and Lopez a 9.8 last season.

“We lost Rodriguez, but the other guys are more seasoned and improved and are doing more difficult moves,” Wolfe said. “The seniors want to have a good last year and they’re hungry. They didn’t like everything that happened last year, but this season should be a little smoother.”

The Fullerton women’s gymnastics team also opens the season this weekend with a home meet Saturday night against Stanford, but Coach Lynn Rogers’ once-high hopes have been dashed in recent months.

Season-ending injuries to four gymnasts have taken a huge bite out of a team that finished eighth at last year’s nationals. Rogers thought the Titans still could place among the nation’s top six teams despite the loss of senior Gina Satterly, who dislocated her shoulder last May.

But in the past month, senior Krickitt Pappas fell off the beam and tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, freshman Kim Valetutto was diagnosed as having degenerative arthritis in her right wrist, and freshman Erin Brewer suffered a stress fracture in her back after falling off the beam.

Satterly, Pappas and Valetutto were among Fullerton’s top six athletes, Rogers said. Six compete in every event and the Titans are down to seven gymnasts before the season has even started.

Rogers believes seniors Lisa Dolan and Stacey Harris and sophomore Stacy Fowlkes will have a good chance of qualifying for the nationals individually, but team goals have changed.

“We have zero depth,” Rogers said. “Before this, I thought we had a team that was considerably better than last year’s. Now, we’ve identified four (out of 10) meets that we have a realistic chance of winning, and anything beyond that would be icing.”

Fullerton men’s basketball Coach John Sneed doesn’t believe any team will be favored to beat Nevada Las Vegas this season, but he does think the top-ranked Runnin’ Rebels, who are being put in a class with some of the great teams in NCAA history, are capable of losing.

“It would take an outstanding performance by someone and an off night by them, but there’s always a possibility of them losing,” said Sneed, whose Titans lost to UNLV, 98-67, Friday night.

Sneed believes the way to beat the Rebels is to press them for as long as possible, but to do that, you must have the right athletes. Fullerton doesn’t, and few college teams do.

“I know this sounds outrageous, but if you could press them more often and eliminate their running game after made shots, you’d have a chance,” Sneed said. “We forced three turnovers with a full-court press but didn’t press them much. People sometimes forget, that team lost five games last year.”

Senior center Genia Miller surpassed Robin Holmes as the Titans’ all-time leading women’s basketball scorer during Saturday’s 73-68 loss to Pacific.

Miller scored 35 points against the Tigers, bringing her career total to 1,758. Monday night against San Jose State, she scored 28 points in a 95-46 victory. Holmes had set the school record with 1,731 points from 1982-86.

Titan Notes

For the second time this season, Fullerton basketball players Joe Small and Genia Miller were named Big West Conference players of the week in the same week. Both earned honors after the second week of the season, and both were awarded again last week for efforts during the two-week period between Dec. 18 and Jan. 1. Small scored 73 points and made 24 of 47 shots in victories over Portland, Chapman and Colorado State. Miller scored 62 points and had 28 rebounds in victories over USC and St. Mary’s. . . . The Titan wrestling team will face Oregon (tonight) and Oregon State (Saturday night) at home but will then be on the road for six consecutive competitions before returning to Titan Gym Feb. 3 for a match against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.