Coach Finds Success on Court and in Classroom

This is a week when winning, losing and alpine sweaters are on our minds and television sets, as we succumb to that worldwide epidemic known as the Winter Olympics. We are all familiar with the symptoms: Sudden, yet passing interest in the luge, a case of instant expertise in triple salchows and a tolerance for watching 15-hour-old “live” sports broadcasts.

Locally, fans are also consumed by thoughts of winning and losing, though not much losing is going on, and sweaters are nowhere in the picture.

These fans are flocking to the Ventura College gym, delirious with an altogether different condition: Pirate Frenzy. They spend their days and nights rooting for the nearly unbeatable Ventura College men’s basketball team, which is now ranked No. 1 among California community colleges and considered to be one of the top jaycee teams in the nation.

Going into last night’s game, they were 29 and 2, and are drawing the largest crowds in the county for a regular indoor event.

“This is truly the only big-time sports we have in the county,” said staff writer Jeff Meyers, who wrote this week’s cover story. “There may be individuals--kayakers, surfers or runners--who do well, but this is the only team like it around. Ventura College may be just a little junior college, but the team is playing the best in the country at that level.”

So how to account for such success? Most players, fans and school administrators interviewed for this story said it is no coincidence that a nine-season losing streak ended when coach Phil Mathews arrived on the scene in 1985.

And, according to Meyers, Mathews is responsible for more than just promoting success on the court, he also wants his players to excel in the classroom. And Matthews knows that good players are not in junior college by choice, they didn’t make the grade.

“I’d say to these kids, ‘You’re a big-time player out of high school, but you’re here because you’re not big-time in the classroom,’ ” he said. “ ‘We’re going to turn that around.’ ”

In other exciting sports news around the county, Jane Hulse reports in the For the Kids column on the marble craze that has recently rolled into Ventura County.

Marbles, it seems, were so hot at Loma Vista School in Ventura that Principal Rich Kirby had to ban them because they had become a disturbance.

It must be Marble Mania. Now, if only it were an Olympic event.