With Secured Varsity Status, Fick Rolls On

This time last baseball season, Chris Fick was on the verge of being left on the Cal Lutheran junior varsity.

Now he is among the most-feared hitters in the NCAA Division III.

Fick went on to earn All-Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and All-Western Region honors as a designated hitter last season. And he has picked up where he left off.

In Cal Lutheran’s last four games before Friday, Fick had 10 hits in 14 at-bats, including four home runs. He was six for nine last weekend with 10 runs batted in as the Kingsmen swept three games from Pomona-Pitzer.

On Monday, he came back with a 4-for-5 performance against The Master’s as Cal Lutheran came back from an 8-1 deficit to forge a 10-10 tie in a game called by darkness. Fick’s double with two out in the bottom of the seventh drove in the tying run.

CAL LUTHERAN

Get-Tough Policy

An attitude adjustment seems to have worked for Rupert Sapwell (6-foot-6, 220), who has moved from center to forward on the basketball team. He has made 25 of 37 shots from the field in three games after suffering through his worst shooting performance of the season (three of 15) in last week’s 85-76 overtime loss to Pomona-Pitzer.

“He’s made a breakthrough,” Coach Mike Dunlap said. “He’s starting to assert himself more and that’s what I want. Against Pomona, he looked very tentative at times. But after that game, I told him that he needs to be more aggressive. I don’t care if he gets called for charging, just as long as he takes the ball to the cylinder.”

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The Kingsmen baseball team trailed Master’s, 8-0, after an inning and a half on Monday even though the Mustangs had only one hit, a looping single.

In Master’s first two at-bats, Cal Lutheran issued eight walks and hit four batters.

Bill Wagner, a junior left-hander, was wild in his debut as a starting pitcher for the Kingsmen. “We threw him in there with the lions,” Coach Marty Slimak said, “and the lions ate him.”

JUNIOR COLLEGES

Canyons Scramble

Gary Peterson, golf coach at College of the Canyons, says the competition is heating up for the top six spots on the roster of the defending state champion.

“The last week in March, we play in the Monterey Peninsula College Golf Invitational at Pebble Beach,” Peterson said. “I only take six players and they all want to go. They are fighting tooth and nail.”

The Cougars, who are coming off a 28-2 season and their third Western State Conference championship in five years, have only two returnees among the 12 players trying to crack the top six positions.

Returnees Andy Houlette from Saugus High and Adam Hill from Hart head an inexperienced-but-promising group that Peterson hopes will mature quickly.

“It’s a very young team and they are playing like it, too,” Peterson said.

The newcomers are redshirt freshmen Mike O’Brien and Jason Black from Hart, and Jason Wolter from Canyon. Others include Paul Muniz (Granada Hills), Glenn Musser (Alemany) and Ryan Shaffer (Crescenta Valley).

Canadians Jason Tlosz and Marshall Patterson, Ryan Caress from Utah and Perry Denardo from Pennsylvania also are competing for spots.

Peterson said the players’ rankings on the team change almost daily.

“We are in a three-week rotation to handicap the guys,” Peterson said. “We play three times a week and it takes nine rounds to generate the handicaps. They are seeded according to how they shoot in those rounds.”

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In his two basketball seasons at Ventura, forward Calvin Curry thrilled crowds with his super-long three-point shots. He is doing the same in his first season at Oklahoma.

“We’ve invented a new stat for Curry,” Billy Tubbs, the Sooner coach, said recently. “We’re going to go with total footage.”

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In a roller-coaster season marred by injuries and other adversities, the Glendale men’s basketball team was on the brink of disaster several times but managed to avoid a collapse. Now, the Vaqueros (15-14) find themselves in the Southern California regional with a first-round game against Southwestern (24-5) tonight in Chula Vista.

Glendale opened the season with five victories in six games, but injuries to 6-5 point guard Maurice Sowells and forward Michael Wright proved costly for the Vaqueros, who lost five consecutive games in January before rallying in WSC South Division play.

Glendale, seeded 22nd in the regional, finished tied with Santa Monica for third place in the South with a 6-4 record. The Vaqueros are seeded one slot higher than Santa Monica because they beat the Corsairs twice in head-to-head competition in conference play.

“We’ve got a group of guys who kind of maintained through it all,” Coach Brian Beauchemin said. “I think we did reasonably well under the circumstances. . . . We are privileged to be in the playoffs.”

CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE

Surprise Starter

The men’s volleyball lineup has among its ranks a highly regarded freshman, but not the one who was expected to make the most-immediate impact.

While Jason Hughes, a top junior national player, is in a battle with Jon Baer for playing time at the opposite hitter position, Collin Smith has taken over at one of the outside hitter spots.

Smith, from Santa Cruz Soquel High, beat out Cameron Green for a starting position during training camp. Since then, he has further secured his role.

He is second on the team with 59 digs and third in kills with 74.

Smith’s steady play has been somewhat of a surprise, though not totally unexpected.

“We expected a lot out of him,” said Tim Koth, a Matador assistant. “We just weren’t sure how soon it would happen.”

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Oliver Heitmann has been playing volleyball in the United States for a month.

He has been attending university classes at Northridge for two weeks.

But he was not “Matadorized” until Thursday night.

When some two dozen crazily attired “Matamaniacs” made their usual raucous appearance during the first half of Northridge’s basketball game against Southern Utah, Heitmann, a 6-7 native of Hamburg, Germany, was, for the first time, among them.

Suffice it to say that his debut was not his idea.

Rather, Coley Kyman and Chris McGee left him no other alternative.

“They didn’t give him an option,” said John Price, Northridge’s volleyball coach. “He didn’t know what was going on. They just gave him some stuff to wear and said, ‘Here, put this on.’ ”

The Matamaniacs were regulars at basketball games in Kyman’s four years as a full-time student at Northridge. This season, however, they have brought their zaniness to only the last two contests.

Obviously, they missed their ringleader.

Kyman, who created the group along with volleyball teammates McGee and Matt Unger, returned to Northridge two weeks ago. Before that, he was in Colorado Springs, Colo., rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

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For the past two seasons, Andre Chevalier and Brooklyn McLinn have had a friendly competition to see which player could account for the most steals.

McLinn was the winner last season with 49, three more than Chevalier.

And going into Thursday’s game against Southern Utah, McLinn appeared as if he would repeat. He already had 51 steals, five more than Chevalier.

Not any more.

Chevalier had six swipes against Southern Utah to McLinn’s two. With two games remaining, they are neck and neck, but each with only an outside chance of reaching the Northridge season record of 62, set by Derrick Gathers in 1982-83.

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Nice choice: On the cover of the game program for last Saturday’s basketball game against Sacramento was a large picture of Matador forward Chris Yard.

Yard is healing from a torn knee ligament and a broken hand. Not only is he out for the season, but he also has not played since Jan. 17.

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When during a game can a coach relax and enjoy himself? If you are Matador Coach Pete Cassidy, apparently never.

Northridge was leading Sacramento, 80-44, last weekend with three minutes to play, and there Cassidy was, his head buried in his hands.

Ozan Korkut, a reserve guard, had just committed a turnover by throwing the ball away while attempting a wraparound pass on a fast break. Were the score any closer, Korkut would soon have been seated alongside his coach on the bench.

As it was, Cassidy grimaced and bore it.

Alas, patience paid dividends. About a minute later, Korkut, a walk-on from Istanbul, Turkey, drilled a three-point baseline jumper. He also scored on a layup.

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The baseball team has posted a 2-1 record as the home team, but the mark deserves an asterisk. Because of earthquake-related problems, one Matador home game was played at Pierce College and another at UCLA.

In fact, Northridge is not scheduled to play its second game at Matador Field until Wednesday against Cal Baptist. The third home game is the WAC opener with Hawaii on March 13. The WAC opener will mark the team’s 20th game of the year.

In 1993, Northridge was 22-6 at home, 12-13 on the road and 2-1 at neutral sites.

Home sweet home? Well, maybe. In its lone game at Matador Field, Northridge was blanked by Fullerton, 1-0.

THE MASTER’S

On the Rebound

It would be easy to blame Emeka Okenwa’s poor free-throw shooting (zero for seven) for the Mustangs’ 88-84 loss to Biola last week, but it was their inability to keep the Eagles off the offensive boards that ruined their 13-game winning streak.

Master’s (26-4) outrebounded Biola, 37-25, in an 84-75 victory over the Eagles on Feb. 4, but the Mustangs were hammered, 55-37, in that department last week, including a 26-14 deficit on the offensive glass.

There were times when even the 6-7, 230-pound Okenwa was getting shoved around.

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Okenwa followed his 0-for-7 free-throw performance against Biola with a 4-for-4 outing against American Indian Bible on Monday.

Before the Biola game, Okenwa had made 11 of 13 free throws.

Around the Campuses . . .

* Ventura’s Brandon Jessie led the WSC men in scoring (22.5 points) and rebounds (10.7), and Moorpark’s Sean Martin led in assists (8.1).

* Julie Hardy of Ventura finished second among WSC women in scoring with a 21.6-point average and Rebekah Cunnan of Canyons was third at 18.8 points. Terra Bruessel of Canyons led in assists with a 7.7 average.

* Dave Ulloa is ranked 18th on Cal Lutheran’s single-season and career assists lists with 108 and 186.

* For the second time in his four-year career, Andre Chevalier led Northridge in rebounding for a game. The 6-foot senior point guard grabbed six against Southern Utah, equaling his career high.

* Chevalier, who needs 35 points in two games to tie Jim Malkin’s Matador career scoring record of 1,301, has reached double figures in scoring in five consecutive games and nine of the last 10.

* Forward Peter Micelli has been Northridge’s most-consistent scorer lately with seven consecutive games in double figures. During the stretch, Micelli’s high is 17 and his low is 12.

Staff writers Fernando Dominguez, Steve Elling, Mike Hiserman and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.