SPORTS NOTEBOOK : Rainouts, Riots Have Made It a ‘Very Weird Year’ for the 49ers : College baseball: Long Beach State Coach Dave Snow has had to change his team’s schedule and hustle to find opponents.

First it was rain. Then it was the riots. Cal State Long Beach baseball Coach Dave Snow wonders what will keep the 49ers off the diamond next.

“This has been a very weird year,” said Snow, a veteran of four College World Series.

To date, Long Beach, which is slated to play in the Carolina Invitational in Chapel Hill, N.C., Friday, has had 14 schedule changes. Most recently, looting and rioting in the city forced the cancellation of the May 1-3 Big West Conference series with visiting UC Santa Barbara.

Further, Cal Poly Pomona, which was slated to play the 49ers in a nonconference game May 5, canceled because the Broncos had to use May 5 to make up a California Collegiate Athletic Assn. game with Cal State Dominguez Hills. Dominguez Hills, located in Carson, had previously postponed its May 2-3 series with Pomona because of the mayhem near its campus.

The Santa Barbara-Long Beach series concludes today. When Cal Poly Pomona canceled, Snow didn’t want the 49ers to remain idle. So on May 4 he called just about every college in Southern California that fields a baseball team, hoping to find an opponent for the next day. Cal Lutheran of Thousand Oaks, the top-ranked Division III team, had May 5 open and agreed to travel to Long Beach. The 49ers won, 3-2.

“I was thinking about this while I was on the phone calling all around looking for someone who could play us,” Snow said. “I have never been through a year like this before.”

Problems began in mid-February when heavy rains cost the 49ers single games at home against St. Mary’s and USC, then threatened to force the postponement of a three-game series at home with Florida, ranked 10th in one poll and eighth in another. Florida officials offered to play host to the series and even picked up the tab to fly Long Beach to Gainesville. However, the 49ers, ranked No. 5 in the nation at the time, lost two of three games in Florida. Until it swept host Fresno State last weekend, Long Beach had problems winning consistently. As a result, the 49ers dropped from the Top 10 in both major collegiate polls. They were ranked 10th in one poll this week and 14th in another.

“I can’t hold the schedule as an excuse,” Snow said. “It has been unsettled. Let’s just say that all the problems haven’t helped things.”

One indication of the effects that the postponements have had on the 49ers is the team’s inability to take advantage of playing at home. Long Beach entered the week 15-7 on its own diamond and 16-10-1 on the road.

“The kind of up-and-down year we have had has had a lot to do with a schedule that was constantly going up and down because of the changes,” acting Athletic Director Dave O’Brien said. “We were not really able to hit a rhythm that a normal schedule allows you to. We have been the victim of bad weather and other unfortunate incidents.”

Still, the 49ers are a strong favorite to receive their third post-season bid under Snow when regional pairings are announced Monday on a national cablecast carried by ESPN.

News that the Cerritos Redevelopment Agency has agreed to fund expansion of one high school gymnasium has students and administrators at Whitney High hopeful that they will soon be having a groundbreaking of their own.

The ABC Unified School District, which will receive $2 million to add a second regulation-size basketball court and other refurbishments to the gym at Cerritos High, says it plans to negotiate a similar pact to build a gymnasium at Whitney, a public college preparatory school located next to Cerritos Park East in the northern part of the city. If all goes well, the Whitney gym could be ready for use by mid-1995, according to Tish Koch, ABC’s assistant superintendent of business and operations.

Better athletic facilities are badly needed at Whitney. Athletic Director Bill Crissman said that on rainy days physical education classes are held in a cramped multipurpose room where most athletic activity is impossible because the noise disturbs nearby classes.

“Usually the kids just sit on the floor and study,” Crissman said.

Studying, a top priority at Whitney, is particularly difficult for volleyball and basketball players without a campus gymnasium, Crissman said. That’s because practices must be held at odd hours at other district facilities, like Cerritos High, where teams from those schools get first priority.

“Some students find it difficult to get out of school at 2 p.m., go home and study until 5, then practice from 7 to 9,” he said.

Finding practice sites has been a problem for years. The Whitney boys’ basketball team, which won back-to-back Southern Section Small School Division titles in 1986 and 1987, often practiced outdoors on blacktop courts. This past season the Wildcats practiced at five sites, including a church recreation room and a park.

“Having a gymnasium here would make a world of difference,” said Joel Whittaker, a junior guard on the basketball team. “There were days we showed up at one gym, only to find it was busy. Then we’d go to another gym and discover something else was going on and we couldn’t use it either. One time, we ended up at a park. Another time, we just canceled practice.”

The girls team held practice this year at the old Excelsior Gymnasium in Norwalk, three miles away. But the $15-an-hour fee cost the school district more than $2,000.

According to Koch, amenities at a Whitney gym could include two regulation-size basketball courts, a weight room, and shower and locker facilities.

This is not the first time people at Whitney have had their hopes raised. In the mid-1980s a similar plan to build a gym was scuttled after bickering among parents, civic leaders and the school district. This time around all sides appear to be more optimistic.

“I’m operating on the assumption that (a gym at Whitney) will happen,” Koch said.

No one was more surprised than Paul Castillo of Paramount High when he was named one of three Southern Section athletic directors of the year.

“I’m completely in the dark on this,” he said. “I don’t know how I got it.”

But his peers in the California State Athletic Directors Assn. thought Castillo was more than qualified to receive the award. A boys’ and girls’ tennis coach who has been at Paramount for 23 seasons, Castillo was nominated for the award by his counterpart at Los Alamitos High, Frank Doretti. The pair met at a 1988 football playoff game.

“Ever since I met him he has been active in the (athletic director’s) organization, and he runs a very strong program up there,” Doretti said. “In finding out other things about him, I discovered that he also coaches. That’s what this award is for, people doing that little bit extra to get the job done.”

Castillo, who became Pirate athletic director in 1988, downplayed his role at Paramount. But football Coach Ken Sutch gave him high marks.

“I can take anything to Paul and he’ll be fair and honest and upfront about it,” Sutch said. “That makes my job easy. He’s very conscientious and well-organized, and that takes the load off a coach’s mind.”

Castillo has seen a lot of changes at Paramount over the years.

The school’s student population has doubled from just under 1,500 students to more than 3,000 today. That has increased pressure on Castillo to find a place for everyone to practice and play. “Size-wise, we haven’t been able to keep up with the demand for facilities for that many kids,” he said.

Castillo said, however, that one constant remains.

“The kids of today aren’t any different than the kids I saw 23 years ago,” he said. “They are still great kids to work with. We have very few problems. Kids today just reflect the era we’re in.”