Football at Chapman Is on the Horizon

Chapman football, an interesting idea broached a year ago, appears to be moving closer to reality and a tentative 1994 start date.

“It’s a done deal,” said Dave Currey, Chapman’s athletic director. “We’re already scheduling. We have a tentative schedule for 1994.”

Much remains to be done--renovating the field, hiring a staff, recruiting players, among other things--but it appears that Orange County will be without an NCAA football team for only one season. Cal State Fullerton dropped its Division I program in December; Chapman plans to compete at the Division III level.

Currey said there’s “a remote chance” that football could be delayed a year. But he says he’s certain Chapman will resurrect the program that was disbanded in 1932 when the school was called California Christian.

Currey also said Chapman will add a school of physical therapy next fall, making it the only county university to offer such training.

“Those are the kinds of things that make your university stand out,” Currey said.

But athletics are the main concern for Currey, who became Chapman athletic director in 1990 after a career spent coaching football, which included head coaching jobs at Cal State Long Beach and Cincinnati. He hopes to hire a football staff by late next school year. At the top of this year’s agenda is renovating the field now used for soccer.

“People forget that the Rams practiced here for years,” Currey said. “We have a football layout. It’s not like we’re totally starting from scratch.”

Currey said the university has raised more than $200,000 and is accepting bids to transform the facility, from one field circled by an under-used track to two practice fields and one main playing field. Currey hopes construction can start by June 1 and that the fields will be ready by the fall.

“We want to better utilized our space,” Currey said. “Now we have one field with a track around it; well, it’s more of a dirt road.”

Eventually, Currey said, the university plans to upgrade the stands and the lighting.

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As part of the university’s move from NCAA Division II to Division III, Chapman has applied to join the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference for the 1994-95 school year. The conference’s athletic directors will meet in May and make a recommendation that will be passed onto the presidents of the institutions next fall.

Chapman will compete as a Division III independent next season and the Panthers tentative football schedule includes games against SCIAC teams, such as Whittier, Redlands and Occidental.

In December, the college announced plans to add four women’s teams--cross-country, track and field, tennis and swimming--in 1993-94, and a golf team in 1994-95. Including football, Chapman plans to field 16 intercollegiate teams--eight for women and eight for men.

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Search madness: For the second time in three years as athletic director, Currey will be conducting a search for a basketball coach this spring. Last year, men’s Coach Bob Boyd was fired and replaced by Mike Bokosky.

Tuesday, women’s Coach Lindsay Strothers announced his resignation after a 2-23 season.

By Wednesday Currey was receiving telephone calls about the position.

Currey said he hopes to fill the position, which like the men’s basketball position includes teaching, by the end of May, when Strothers’ contract runs out.

“It’s not like I have a room across the hall that’s empty,” Currey said. “Our recruiting efforts are continuing.”

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The Chapman men’s tennis team, which won three NCAA Division II titles in the 1980s, is continuing its rough road as a non-scholarship program.

Under first-year Coach Sergiu Boerica, the Panthers are 0-10 and 0-3 in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. Their closest result was a 6-3 loss to Western Washington Monday.

The Panthers were down to six players--the minimum--before Boerica persuaded John List, who played for the team last season, to play in home matches.

Boerica says there are several players on campus who for a variety of reasons aren’t on his team.

One, Aris Vassiliou, the only member of last year’s team to qualify for the NCAA individual championships, quit the team two weeks ago in frustration. Another, the No. 3 singles player, dropped out of school. A third is coaching tennis at Cypress College.

What remains is mostly a collection of walk-on players who are usually overmatched.

“The other guys are just hanging in there,” Boerica said. “I told them from the start I just want to see improvement in the way they play.”

The team’s two best players are David Joerger, a freshman who also plays for the basketball team, and Jason Stephens, who played for the Panthers last season.

Joerger, who was a state prep champion in Minnesota, is 2-3 since joining the team after basketball season. Stephens, making the transition from No. 5 and No. 6 singles to No. 1 and No. 2, is 2-10.

“I still believe these guys can improve and if they decide to come back again next year we’ll definitely have a different outlook,” Boerica said. “I’m trying to make them understand that the outlook will be brighter in the future.”

Chapman plays host to Southern Colorado at 2 p.m. today.

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Southern California College has hired Bob Pacieznik, boys’ soccer coach at Santa Ana High, to coach the inaugural season of its women’s soccer program.

Pacieznik, who led Santa Ana to the Sunset League title and its second consecutive semifinal appearance in the Southern Section semifinals, will continue to coach at Santa Ana.

Dave McLeish, the coach of the Vanguard men’s team, also coaches a high school boys’ team, at one of Santa Ana’s Sunset League rivals, Marina. Two of Pacieznik’s former players at Santa Ana--freshmen Hector Perez and Martin Cervantes--play at SCC.

Notes

After winning eight of 11 games, including three of five against teams ranked in the NCAA Division II preseason poll, the Chapman softball team returned to California and was swept by No. 14 Cal State Bakersfield, 5-0, 5-4, in a CCAA doubleheader Tuesday. The Panthers are 13-11, 3-5 in the conference. . . . D’Andre Brown, a Christ College Irvine center, and Mike West, a Southern California College forward, were honorable mention on the NAIA Division I All-America men’s basketball team. Genevieve Graff and Stacy Kirch of the Christ College Irvine women’s team were named NAIA Division All-American Scholar-Athletes.