Harlem Globetrotters Visit Moorpark College : Basketball: Team holds a training camp and will play a fund-raising game Saturday night.

Al Nordquist hopes that “Sweet Georgia Brown” will become a familiar refrain on the campus of Moorpark College. It will, at least for this week.

The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters are holding an eight-day training camp at the Moorpark campus. It is scheduled to culminate in a basketball game next Saturday night against the team’s perennial rivals, the Washington Generals. Proceeds from the game will benefit the Moorpark school’s athletic program. Tickets, at $10 each, are on sale at the Moorpark College business office, 378-1437.

Nordquist, men’s basketball coach at Moorpark College and prime mover in getting the team to train at the school, hopes the Globetrotters’ visit to Moorpark will become an annual tradition. Nordquist said he and Globetrotters General Manager Joe Anzivino, an Agoura resident, have been working on the Moorpark training camp for several years.

Nordquist said the team filmed a television special at the school in 1981 and was scheduled to train at Moorpark last year, but canceled to appear on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” The ABC program was a better deal financially for the team.

“The Globetrotters have been going around the world as goodwill ambassadors for basketball for 65 years,” Nordquist said, but “the Globetrotters are a business.”

Rex Post, the road manager for the team, said that during the training camp, 20 veterans and 13 invited rookies will compete for 22 spots on the two units of the Globetrotters. One unit is scheduled to tour Europe in the coming months, while the other is booked to play in Alaska, Hawaii and the Far East. Each unit has one female player.

Both units of the Harlem Globetrotters are coached by Tex Harrison and Russell Ellington.

“To be a Globetrotter, you have to know when to turn it on and when to turn it off,” Harrison said. “We want to exhibit our athletic skills, but also to entertain as well.”

Harrison, who has been with the organization since 1954, is not surprised by the continuing popularity of the Globetrotters.

“Well, for one thing, we’re G-rated, wholesome family entertainment,” Harrison said, “and there’s not too much of that around.”

For Jay Graves, a 6-foot-4 guard from Talladega College in Alabama, playing for the Globetrotters would be the realization of a boyhood dream.

“I remember watching Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon and wanting to do the things they did,” he said.

Harrison, who has been to 110 countries with the team, said travel is not the only fringe benefit of being a Globetrotter.

“I’ve eaten caviar with the late Nikita Khrushchev . . . had tea with Queen Elizabeth and gotten a tan on the French Riviera,” Harrison said. “And I owe it all to the Harlem Globetrotters.”