SAN DIEGO COLLEGE NOTEBOOK : Players Cut From Great Cloth

Christian Heritage basketball Coach Swen Nater’s annual recruiting drive is limited to some fast talk over the telephone. He has no travel budget. And getting a top player to play for the NAIA Hawks is a tough sell. But he might have found a hook: a liberal arts degree titled “Pastoral Science.”

Nater said he is close to getting commitments from two promising recruits who want to become pastors. That could be the difference in obtaining a 6-foot-4 post player from Anchorage, Alaska, and a 6-3 shooting guard from Ft. Wayne, Ind.

“We need three inside players and two outside players,” said Nater, whose team finished 10-20. That’s the second-worst record since the Hawks’ 9-19 finish in their 1986-87 debut season. It followed a 1989-90 season in which they were 33-6 and won the National Christian College Athletic Assn. championship.

Nater said his recruiting of aspiring pastors is not by design.

“How many kids that want to be pastors are good basketball players?” he said. “Kids that are spiritually right. You don’t find the combination of a spiritually mature student-athlete and a good basketball player very often.”

Arena follies: The Aztecs and the Montezumans are still feuding. The Hawks and the Tritons are building. And so go the plans of three big collegiate athletic facilities in town.

The neighborhood has taken San Diego State to court in an effort to thwart its planned Student Activities Center--a 12,000-seat multipurpose indoor arena. UCSD and Christian Heritage, whose plans are less grandiose, are moving toward their own indoor facilities with little fanfare and no resistance.

UCSD is in the design phase of its Recreation Intramural Athletics Complex (also known as the RIMAC events center), a facility that will seat 4,000 to 5,000 spectators. Groundbreaking is expected in about a year and completion during the 1993-94 academic year. Christian Heritage already has put the shovel to the ground for construction on a gymnasium that will seat 2,500. In the past, the Hawks’ basketball team played home games at Grossmont College and Patrick Henry High School.

There’s no telling how long SDSU’s SAC, a $41-million project that was supposed to be completed by this fall, will be tied up in litigation. SDSU has funded two environmental impact reports on the on-campus arena, proposed for student activities, concerts and basketball games. But homeowners’ groups from an area known as Montezuma Mesa have challenged both. A group called Friends of the College Area in February filed suit in Superior Court, which means the fate of the SAC could be determined by a mediator.

The Associated Students, through a gradual increase in semesterly student union fees, are paying for it. But now it looks like most who were freshmen during the spring 1988 semester--when the students voted in favor of the arena--will have paid hundreds of dollars and long since graduated by the time it is built.

UCSD’s students also voted for their RIMAC, and will pay $22 million of the $32 million it will cost to construct. The difference is UCSD’s students won’t start paying until their facility is built. Nor will the neighbors will be grumbling.

“We consulted with the community on the location of the site, and the community endorsed it,” said Tom Tucker, UCSD’s assistant vice chancellor in undergraduate affairs and co-chairman of the RIMAC committee. “It’s not an arena-event issue. It’s not a concert facility. Events (are) definitely the low priority here. So far, we’re very optimistic about the way things have gone.”

Sweet prose: UCSD Athletic Director Judy Sweet, who became president of the NCAA in January, apparently won’t be a silent force behind the governing body of intercollegiate athletics. Two weeks ago, she wrote a commentary in USA Today, refuting recent proposals that the NCAA use state court systems in matters of due process and financial aid.

In the March 12 article, Sweet answered critics who suggested that student-athletes and employees at the universities have no individual rights. Said Sweet: the NCAA is “replete with due-process protections.” She played defense throughout the commentary, pointing out that NCAA bylaws evolved with the input of “nationally recognized legal scholars.”

Unsung heroes: Christi English (MVP), Molly Hunter (Top Defender), Julie Doria (Most Improved) and Angie Straub (Hustle Award) grabbed the headline awards at the University of San Diego women’s basketball banquet last week. Not to be overshadowed are Chris Enger, Debbie Gollnick and Lynda Jones, who were named to the West Coast Conference’s All-Academic Team.

Sophomore Enger, also an All-WCC first-teamer at forward, is a business major carrying a 3.31 grade-point average. Junior guard Gollnick is a computer science major with a 3.33 GPA, and Jones, a junior forward, has a 3.20 GPA in business administration. Straub, however, was a double winner. The sophomore guard has hustled her way to a 3.31 GPA studying business administration.