PREP WEDNESDAY : College Is No Longer Their Ace : Volleyball: With fewer scholarships available for men, Division I prospects are scrambling to find ways to cover expenses.

Matt Taylor and Steve Lucas share a UCLA dormitory room as well a common problem among college volleyball players.

How the heck do we pay the rent?

Lucas and Taylor, redshirts at UCLA, are among hundreds of players paying for lessons in the economics of a struggling Division I men’s sport:

--Scholarships are as hard to come by as an easy day at practice.

--NCAA rules prohibit players from working during the school year, even if they’re on partial scholarships, which have become the norm at most schools.

--Thousands of dollars in student loans, grants and summer jobs are often the only way to pay for tuition, books and living expenses that partial scholarships don’t cover.

When it comes to stretching scholarship money, Taylor and Lucas, former Huntington Beach High teammates, consider themselves somewhat fortunate.

Taylor, a freshman, receives a partial scholarship, but pays most of the $8,500 needed for tuition and housing costs through summer jobs and help from his parents.

“Truth is, if I would have known earlier that I couldn’t get a full scholarship for volleyball, I wouldn’t have gotten into it,” said Taylor, The Times Orange County player of the year last season. “I wouldn’t have put in all the time on volleyball. I would have stuck with basketball, where I could have a full scholarship.”

Lucas, a sophomore transfer from UC Irvine, is paying his own way as a walk-on with the third-ranked Bruins.

“I gave up a full scholarship at Irvine,” said Lucas, a 1990 all-county player. “I was frustrated after I didn’t make the Olympic Festival team last summer, and I realized that if you’re not playing for a big name, you won’t go very far. This is a sport of small circles.”

And, at some places, deep pockets. Players at private universities such as USC, Pepperdine and Stanford face tuition costs between $15,000 and $23,000 a year.

Dain Blanton, a sophomore starter at fourth-ranked Pepperdine, receives about $18,000 a year in scholarship money. Pepperdine Coach Marv Dunphy helped Blanton apply for a grant to cover the rest of his college expenses.

“Marv got me the best deal because I’m not paying anything now,” said Blanton, a former Laguna Beach High standout. “I think it helped that I’m a minority, and whatever I could get with a grant would free some money for someone else. Some of the guys have to pay a lot, but everyone gets some sort of aid, academic or something.”

Only 23 Division I schools field men’s volleyball teams, and the NCAA will reduce from five to 4 1/2 the number of scholarships the teams can offer for the 1993-94 school year. The reduction was part of an overall athletic cut.

There are 273 Division I women’s programs, and teams offer as many as 12 scholarships. The NCAA considers women’s volleyball a “major sport” and was therefore exempt from the recent cuts.

Not surprisingly, the men’s scholarship reductions haven’t been popular with coaches at the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. tournament, which starts today at UC Irvine.

Most of the coaches have been strapped with limited budgets and scholarships for years, and the reduction, they say, won’t help any.

“I don’t think the cut will have much of an effect on recruiting,” UCLA Coach Al Scates said. “But it’s still kind of ridiculous to cut it from five to 4 1/2.

“And I think it’s ridiculous that a sport that starts six players gets only 4 1/2 scholarships. Basketball starts five and gets 13 scholarships. I don’t think the coaches know what to do with all of them.”

The scholarship reduction won’t have an impact on schools such as 17th-ranked UC Irvine and top-ranked Cal State Long Beach, which are already well below the NCAA limit.

Long Beach, the defending NCAA men’s champion, offers 2 1/2 men’s scholarships and 12 women’s.

UC Irvine offers 7 1/4 women’s scholarships but only 1 1/2 for the men’s team, a self-funded program for the past year.

“In the worse-case scenario, we might lose our (men’s) scholarships for next year,” UC Irvine Coach Bill Ashen said. “We’re self-funded, and our fund-raising efforts haven’t been very good.

“When we started the program six years ago, we spun it off the success of the U.S. national team. Now that the focus is on them with all the players coming back, we hope to gain momentum off it. I just wish UCI could clear its budget up and help us out again.”

Cal State Fullerton announced in January that it was cutting women’s volleyball, but the team, after filing a lawsuit claiming the move violated state sex education codes prohibiting sex discrimination, won a court-ordered preliminary injunction that temporarily reinstated the sport.

The Titans do not have a men’s volleyball program.

Most coaches divide the scholarships among the players, so the money isn’t always enough. And NCAA rules allow only walk-on players to hold jobs during the season.

“It makes it harder on the sport and on the players,” said UCLA’s Dan Landry, a walk-on who works part-time delivering baked goods.

“It’s unfair that the NCAA won’t allow you to take a partial scholarship and still work to pay for the rest of your school (expenses). It hurt me this year.”

The NCAA allows players to take summer jobs. Lucas delivers chocolates. Taylor takes odd jobs, and Blanton works at Laguna Beach summer art festivals.

“It’s pocket money,” Blanton said. “Most of it’s gone by the end of the school year. Things start getting tight then.”

Rules also prohibit Blanton from taking another summer job--playing on the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals’ summer beach tour. Blanton already has a Triple-A beach rating, and potential winnings on the tour would be more than enough to pay rent and school expenses.

Said Lucas: “I think it hurts the athletes that the NCAA doesn’t let us work. But I also understand why they need the rule. Otherwise, you would have some corrupt alum giving a football or a basketball player $20 an hour to turn on the sprinklers on campus.”

Blanton, Lucas and Taylor are among the few boys’ volleyball players recently recruited from Orange County.

More than 40 county girls, but fewer than 15 boys, have signed with Division I programs the past two years.

Men’s volleyball hasn’t kept up with the sport’s growth at the high school level in the past six years. With only 23 Division I programs recruiting for several thousand players, it’s very much a buyer’s market.

“It’s almost like comparing it with the number of college players who make it in pro basketball,” Ashen said. “Only you’re talking about high school players trying to make it in college.”

Blanton, the 1990 county player of the year, was one of the few players fortunate enough to choose where he played. He selected Pepperdine over UC Irvine.

“When it came down to the wire, people (recruiting him) were bailing out right and left,” he said. “They want to give you as little money as possible because they want to make sure there’s enough to go around for everyone.”

According to the National Federation of High School Athletic Assns., 18,013 boys played for 886 teams in 1991, while more than 300,000 girls played on 12,017 teams. Only 560 schools fielded boys’ teams in 1985.

Nearly 25% of the nation’s boys’ teams are from the Southern Section. There are 218 teams participating in 28 leagues in the section this season. Five years ago, 138 teams played in 13 leagues.

“Places like Orange County are hotbeds for volleyball, and it’s not uncommon to see a kid from there go to a school for academics,” Rutgers Newark Coach Bob Bertucci said.

“They’ll play volleyball, not get any (athletic) scholarship money and pay $20,000 in tuition.

“But what if some of the schools with bigger athletic departments, what if a Texas or a Nebraska, started offering men’s volleyball scholarships? Then the Orange County kids, the ones who are talented, could go all over the country and play.”

Players who don’t play at the Division I level have few other options.

Some players join college club programs scattered along the West Coast. There also are 10 Division II programs that offer only a few scholarships. There are 24 Division III teams, but they don’t offer scholarships.

Brent Hilliard spent one season playing club volleyball at Humboldt State before landing a volleyball scholarship to Long Beach. Hilliard, who was barely recruited from Dana Hills High, is a member of the U.S. national ‘B’ team and led Long Beach to the NCAA title last season.

Some players attend community colleges, a cheaper alternative to four-year schools.

Community colleges, where tuition runs in the hundreds instead of the thousands, have become springboards to Division I for some players, including two-time Olympic gold medalist Steve Timmons (Orange Coast College and USC).

“It (scholarship limitations) puts much more emphasis on the junior colleges,” said Charlie Brande, a co-coach at Edison High and an assistant coach at Orange Coast College. “You have the kids who can’t afford to go to a four-year program going to a two-year junior college to develop.”

And where will they play after two years?

“The (four-year) coaches know what they have then,” Brande said. “They have a 20-year-old man playing for them instead of an 18-year-old kid.”

Coaches aren’t counting on increases in scholarships anytime soon. But players will have more scholarship money available if more schools begin adding the sport.

“There’s a real large resistance by major schools to add it,” Bertucci said. “A lot of the athletic directors are missing the boat.

“They’re all looking to get to the final 16 in basketball, looking for that pot of gold.

“But if they took one-tenth f their basketball budget and put it into volleyball, you would have one of best-funded programs in the country. I can’t understand it.”

Taylor said expansion might not be the answer. He said increasing the number of scholarships for existing programs is the best way the strengthen the sport and provide more opportunities for young players.

“Who’s going to want to go somewhere when the program is just starting?” he said. “Anyone who’s interested in the sport is going to go to one of the California schools, ones that are winning.

“What I see happening is a lot of kids just dropping the sport. It’s too much of a hassle.”

Volleybuck$

NCAA rules allow Division I men’s volleyball programs five scholarships per season, a figure that will be cut to 4 1/2 in the 1993-94 season. The limit for women’s volleyball is 12 and will remain at that number. Here’s how the schools with the nation’s top men’s programs stack up in allocation of scholarships:

Rankings Scholarships School Men Women Men Women Tuition Cal State Long Beach 1 2 2.5 12 $1,053 Stanford 2 1 5 12 $15,102 UCLA 3 6 5 12 $3,200 Pepperdine 4 15 5 11 $22,100 UC Santa Barbara 5 13 4.6 11 $2,418 Cal State Northridge 6 NR 2.5 6 $1,200 Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne 7 NR 4.7 3.1 $9,510 Rutgers Newark 8 NR 4.5 0 $12,000 Southern Cal 9 14 5 12 $16,020 Hawaii 10 3 5 12 $1,436

NOTES: Men’s rankings based on April 14 Tachikara coaches’ poll; women’s based on final Tachikara poll (UCLA, ranked sixth, won the national championship). Tuition based on residency and 12 credit hours per semester/per year. The Rutgers Newark women’s team is Division III and does not offer scholarships. The Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne women’s team is Division II. Nonresident tuition for Hawaii, which has 11 in-state and eight out-state scholarship players, is $4,070.

SOURCES: College athletic and admissions departments.