Sports : VIKING DYNASTY

Another year, another championship for the Long Beach City College men’s track team.

The Vikings won their 16th consecutive conference title under Coach Ron Allice at the South Coast Conference championships at Mt. San Antonio College on Saturday.

Long Beach amassed 309 1/2 points to outdistance Mt. San Antonio, which finished with 268 points. El Camino and Cerritos were third and fourth with 55 1/2 and 54 points.

“When you have been successful, tradition can work for you or against you and I was worried about the team being complacent,” said Allice, who has guided Long Beach to 10 state championships and a 78-4 dual-meet record over the past 16 years. “This wasn’t an easy win. It was an ulcer producer and a nail-biter.”

Frank Guialdo and Henry Thomas won two events each for the Vikings, who qualified 62 entrants for the Southern California preliminaries in San Diego on Saturday.

Guialdo won the 110-meter hurdles and 400 hurdles in 14.28 seconds and 51.49. Thomas won the shotput with a put of 46 feet and the discus with a throw of 155-1.

Ronnie Williams won the 400 in 46.80 and joined Guialdo, Chrystin Wuthrich and Solomen Humphries on the Vikings’ 1,600-meter relay team, which timed 3:12.91 to win by nearly seven seconds.

Lam Nguyen and Jonathan Jordan won the pole vault (15 feet) and triple jump (49-6 1/4) for Long Beach.

Magdelena Lewy won the 1,500 (4:46.44), 3,000 (10:17.6) and 5,000 (17:44.0) to pace the Long Beach City women to their first conference title since 1990.

The Vikings scored 243 1/2 points to run away from second-place El Camino with 142. Mt. San Antonio and Cerritos were third and fourth with 124 1/2 and 79 points.

Angel Carver set a meet record in winning the triple jump with a mark of 40-1 and also won the high jump at 5-0. The Vikings’ 400 relay team of LaShawn Stringer, Chanda Brooks, Sonya Bryant and Cavetra Mitchell also set a meet record to win in 4.66. Mitchell was also victorious in the 100 meters (11.85) and 200 (23.5).

Karen Vigilant won the 100 hurdles (14.51) and 400 hurdles (1:03.0) and Alisha Lopez ran to victory in the 800 in 2:18.45.

ONE OF A KIND

The Long Beach State women finished 10th in the inaugural California-Nevada collegiate track and field championships at UCLA on Saturday and Sunday. The meet featured 21 colleges from Divisions I, II and III as well as National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics schools.

Le’Gretta Hinds placed second in the 400 hurdles in 58.80, shaving nearly a second off her personal best and attaining a provisional qualifying standard for the Division I national meet. Hinds and Lisa Moxley were also fourth and sixth in the 100-meter hurdles in 14.14 and 14.32.

Stacy Pando moved into fourth on the all-time Long Beach 3,000 list in placing third in 9:50.34 and freshman Tanya Futami timed 4:45.29 in a 1,500 heat Saturday to qualify for Junior Nationals (age 19 and younger).

Long Beach finished 15th in the men’s competition. Patrick Scott accounted for all of the 49ers’ scoring with fourth-place finishes in the long jump (wind-aided 23-6 1/2) and triple jump (49-6 1/4).

“It was a good opportunity to experience high-level competition in a two-day meet with finals which is a very similar scenario we’ll have at the conference meet,” Long Beach Coach Andy Sythe said. “The meet brought a lot of attention and interest in the team scoring. We had a lot of good results.”

Sythe is hoping for more of the same in the Big West Conference meet May 13-14 at New Mexico State. The 49er women finished third last year and scored more than 100 points for the first time.

CRUNCH TIME

The Long Beach State baseball team, ranked 15th by Baseball America and 16th by Collegiate Baseball, is a game behind Big West co-leaders Nevada and Cal State Fullerton with six conference games remaining.

The 49ers (32-14, 10-5), who lost in a nonconference game to Pepperdine, 10-8, on Tuesday, play a three-game series at Nevada Las Vegas beginning Friday and will host San Diego State on Tuesday.

FINAL FRONTIER

The Long Beach State softball team will play host to Cal State Fullerton in a Big West Conference game at Mayfair Park at 4 p.m. Friday.

The game will be the final regular-season home game at Mayfair Park for the 49ers. Next season, Long Beach will play in an on-campus facility under construction.

Stacy Van Essen hit her sixth home run to set a school season record in a 4-1 defeat against UNLV in the second game of a doubleheader Saturday at Las Vegas.

Van Essen pitched a four-hitter to give the 20th-ranked 49ers (27-23, 12-12) a 1-0 victory in the first game.

NAMES IN THE NEWS

* Traci Waites has been selected as an assistant women’s basketball coach at Arizona. Waites, 27, a guard on Long Beach State’s Final Four team in 1988, will reunite with former 49er Coach Joan Bonvincini, who will be entering her third season as coach at Arizona. Waites coached at Santa Monica College last season.

* Anthony Vela of Long Beach City College set a conference record of 4:06.12 to win the 400-meter individual medley in the South Coast Conference finals at Belmont Plaza.

Vela also won the 200 butterfly and swam on the Vikings’ victorious 400 freestyle and (3:09.00) and 200 and 400 medley relays, which timed 1:37.77 and 3:34.89.

Long Beach outlasted Golden West, 802-724 1/2, to win the men’s team title. Cerritos was fourth with 291.

* Tomika Cantley has signed a letter of intent to play women’s basketball for Long Beach State. Cantley, a 6-2 center for Gardena High, averaged 13.2 points and 15.2 rebounds.

* Brandon Whiting and Dan Juan Magee of Long Beach Poly have been selected to play in the North-South Shrine Classic football game at Citrus College in July.

ON THE WARPATH

The Centennial High baseball team is out of the race for the Pioneer League title at 9-11 and 1-4, but sophomore Eunique Johnson is in contention for league most valuable player honors.

Johnson is batting .622 in 45 at-bats with four home runs and 23 runs batted in. He has hit in all but three of the Apaches’ games. Johnson, who has drawn 23 walks, had only one at-bat and was walked three times in two of the games he has not had a hit.

A 6-1 right-hander, Johnson also has a 3-3 record as a pitcher.