COLLEGES / ALAN DROOZ : Johnson Can See World From Dominguez Hills

Football--American-style--is making its way around the globe, and one of its busiest ambassadors is John Johnson of the Cal State Dominguez Hills athletic staff.

While helping build the Dominguez Hills athletic department from its infancy in the 1960s, Johnson has long been in the forefront of football expansionism.

Reaching new lengths on his far-flung itinerary, he recently ran a series of coaching and player clinics in New Zealand. Those were set up while he was working with Swedish clubs at Super Bowl XXV in January.

Now Johnson is getting ready to travel in May to Stockholm, where he will work with the Lidingo Chargers. And this week he received an invitation from the Moscow Bears to coach at their summer training camp. The European teams are getting ready for the European Cup, and there is talk of a World Cup down the road.

All this is coming about while the World League of American Football is making its debut in Europe, where Johnson has the satisfaction of seeing several of his club players succeeding.

“It seems like, these days, anything connected with American football, (Europeans) are excited about,” Johnson said.

After working for several seasons with Australian teams, particularly the Kookaburras, and arranging scrimmages for them with area colleges, Johnson was invited to New Zealand, which hopes to open a new chapter in its rivalry with Australia. He is on sabbatical from his teaching duties at Dominguez Hills this semester.

“I worked with 16 clubs in Auckland, then did clinics with two teams in Wellington,” Johnson said. “Football in New Zealand is relatively in the formative stages. New Zealand wants to play the Australians, that’s a big rivalry. A lot of their players are Polynesians, Samoans. They’re big and fast so (improvement) is only a matter of time.”

Johnson said among the countries with amateur clubs, “the English and the Finns are further along than anybody.” They are the favorites for the European Cup, but Sweden hopes to make some strides.

“The Swedes are pretty far along,” he said. “They love to play. The players pay their own way, they line the field themselves. It’s an interesting phase of football.”

Johnson said that because the players don’t grow up with the game, tactics have to be kept relatively simple, but the teams are getting more sophisticated.

“You have to keep it basic but we’re going to put in some plays from the run-and-shoot,” he said. “The trouble is, you need an American quarterback to do the run-and-shoot. We make it a little less complicated, we refine it to give the passer the option rather than have the wide receivers make the choice.”

European teams limit the number of American players on their roster, but Johnson said most have American quarterbacks. The Finns, however, won’t let their teams employ an American at that position.

“I think that’s a good rule,” Johnson said. “You’ll never develop a good native quarterback unless you play one. And in a World Cup you wouldn’t want an American against an American.”

The explosion of global popularity for American football sits well with Johnson, who was on the coaching staff at UCLA in the 1950s. While chairing the athletic department and coaching the golf team at Dominguez Hills (which doesn’t have a football program), he wrote “How to Watch Football,” an informative but not overly technical book for neophytes.

The book, he said, is being translated into Swedish and German, and this week he learned the WLAF, which has teams in London, Barcelona and Frankfurt as well as the U.S., may be interested in marketing it. “It’s in the talking stages,” he said.

When it comes to football, Johnson talks a good game.

Three seniors on the Loyola Marymount volleyball team went out in style in their final home match last week by upsetting Stanford in a five-game marathon. The Lions won the fifth game, 17-15.

In the match, senior outside hitters Sio Saipaia and Chuck Donlon each recorded 26 kills. Another senior hitter, Mike Longacre, also played his last game in Gersten Pavilion.

The Lions, who went into this week’s action ranked 12th in the American Volleyball Coaches national poll, traveled to Hawaii this week. On Wednesday, they rallied from a 2-1 deficit to beat the Rainbows in five games. Loyola (8-11), winners of six of seven matches, also played Hawaii in a late match Thursday.

The Lions are trying to qualify for postseason play for the first time in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. They finish the regular season with road matches at UC Irvine on April 17 and Cal State Northridge on April 19.

While Loyola Marymount first baseman Joe Ciccarella has developed into perhaps the most feared slugger in the West Coast Conference, he is taking opponents by surprise on the basepaths.

Not only does the junior lead the Lions with seven home runs and rank second on the team with a .418 batting average and 31 runs batted in, but he has taken a big lead in stolen bases, running successfully 13 times in 20 attempts.

The 6-foot-3, 195-pound Ciccarella hardly has the whippet physique of such teammates as Mark Tillman and Rick Mediavilla, who bat ahead of him, but he has developed a sharp sense for knowing when to run, although as the cleanup batter driving in runs is his prime concern.

Unkindest Cut--Former Loyola Marymount basketball standout Jeff Fryer helped the Albany Patroons of the Continental Basketball Assn. earn the best record in professional basketball history (50-6) this winter, but he was cut last week, two games into the playoffs, to make room on the roster for another guard.

Fryer, a shooting guard who was injured for part of the season, led the Patroons with 37 three-point baskets and averaged 9.7 points. However, as the CBA playoffs began the Patroons lost several of their best players to the NBA and Europe and signed point guard Jerry Johnson to give the team better speed.

Notes

The Cal State Dominguez Hills baseball team, 7-5 in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn., resumes CCAA play today with a three-game series against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (7-4 in CCAA play). The teams play at 2:30 today, then play a noon doubleheader Saturday. All the games are at Toro Field. The Toros, 14-12-1 overall, are ranked 17th in Division II. . . . Pitcher Anne Ibarra and catcher Lety Carranza were named to the 10-member Pioneer Classic All-Tournament Team after leading Cal State Dominguez Hills to a 4-2 record in an eight-team softball invitational at Cal State Hayward. The 12th-ranked Lady Toros (23-7-1) finished third in the tournament, which included many of the region’s top-ranked teams. They lost a doubleheader at second-ranked Chapman College Tuesday.

Loyola Marymount freshman Julie Oshiro, who began the season as the tennis team’s No. 3 singles player, has worked her way up to No. 1 and has a 9-5 record in the top spot. The freshman from Gardena is trying to lead the Lions (14-7) to their best-ever team record. The Lions’ best season was 1987, when they finished 22-12.