Starting Anew Means Success for Occidental

In an improbable and remarkable turnaround this season, the Occidental women’s volleyball team went from being one of the worst teams in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to one of the best in one year.

In fact, the Tigers won a share of the SCIAC title with a 9-3 conference record and were 16-6 overall. Not bad, considering they had only three players back from a team that was 5-19 and 2-10 in the conference a year ago.

It was the first time Occidental has won or shared the championship since 1983.

Occidental, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and La Verne tied for the SCIAC title. On Saturday, the teams played a mini-tournament to determine which would get the automatic bid to the NCAA Division III playoffs.

La Verne won the three-way lottery for the first-round bye, then Claremont-Mudd-Scripps defeated Occidental, 15-9, 15-11, 15-12, ending the Tigers’ season. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps defeated La Verne, 16-14, 16-14, 13-15, 15-13, for the automatic NCAA bid, but La Verne was invited as an at-large team.

“Unfortunately, you tend to remember the last thing you did,” Occidental Coach Jeff Campbell said. “I personally feel that it was great season--a fantastic season. No one really expected much.

“Certainly, we didn’t have as much talent as other teams, but we played hard every game.”

Campbell had as much to do with the success as anyone.

Last year, Occidental was coached by Alec Peters, who after a season marked by injuries and defeats, left to continue as an assistant coach with the USC’s men’s team.

Campbell, an assistant for the Cal State Northridge men’s team, applied for the Occidental job and ultimately was hired.

He inherited three players and no recruiting class. Before he could preach hard work, he had a to find a team to preach to.

“I expected the worst, obviously,” Campbell said. “I mean, how good can you be with three returning players and no recruits?”

Campbell got a computer printout of students who had listed volleyball as an interest and who had mentioned high school volleyball experience.

“So I called about 60 people. Out of that I got about nine or 10 girls who played high school volleyball. Basically, I got a lot of average players and nine of the 11 players on our team play regularly.

“I think that what’s unique is that every player is giving 110% every practice. They work extremely hard. They pay attention and they have the desire. We tend to outhustle every team. We play to our strengths, we have a good ball control team and we have a good defense. We’re definitely not big, so we don’t try to do something that we’re not capable of doing. So we dig more balls than other teams.”

The team got an idea early that the formula might be successful.

“We had two to three weeks of training, just two days of practice and then took second in the Christian Heritage tournament,” Campbell said. “After that it was like, ‘Hey, we could be decent. We matched our wins from last year in a two-day tournament.’ That was the talk.”

At Occidental, they may talk about this season for a long time.

*

No NCAA record is kept for it, but La Verne’s Willie Reyna might have set one of some kind last Saturday. He was responsible for eight touchdowns during the Leopards’ 55-37 victory over Cal Lutheran. He threw for six and ran for two.

His six touchdown passes tied Mark Van Allen’s school record, set in 1986, but fell two short of the Division III record, set by Kirk Baumgartner of Wisconsin Stevens Point in 1989.

Reyna completed 23 of 32 passes for 373 yards, but threw only eight times during the second half, when teammate Darren Maclellen ran for 268 yards. La Verne had 651 total yards.

*

Bobby Quattlebaum and Don Lawrence, Azusa Pacific’s men’s and women’s soccer coaches, respectively, were each voted coach of the year in the NAIA’s District 3.

The women’s team, led by Jenny Cowper, NAIA District 3 co-player of the year, will travel to Olympia, Wash., to play Seattle in the Western Regionals.

The men’s team finished its season with a 1-0 loss to Biola in the District 3 playoffs.

Cowper, Stephanie Clement and Shelly O’Brien were voted to the women’s All-District 3 first team, and Carl Stoehr, Matt Chacko and Chris Stempson were first-team selections among the men.

*

Because of incorrect information, it was mistakenly reported here last week that the Cal State Dominguez Hills women’s soccer team would be in the NCAA Division II tournament. Because of a forfeit in the Northern California Athletic Conference, Dominguez Hills was denied a chance to repeat as national champion and the NCAA chose Sonoma State to play in the tournament instead.

Sonoma State finished second to Cal State Chico, which won the conference title and received an automatic bid. The NCAA takes only two at-large teams besides the four regional representatives, and Sonoma State and Franklin Pierce won those spots.

*

The SCIAC water polo tournament will be played at Whittier, starting at 8 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. The title game will be played Sunday at noon.