Logan: School Knew of Problem Last Year : Basketball: Player says Cal State San Bernardino officials told her she had not violated NCAA rules.

Basketball player Felice Logan, expected to be the subject of an NCAA investigation at Cal State San Bernardino, said that school athletic officials knew of her possible ineligibility before the first of the year and still allowed her to play.

Logan, a sophomore, averaged 10 points a game for the San Bernardino women’s basketball team that lost to North Dakota State in the NCAA Division II championship game last March.

San Bernardino officials held a news conference on May 17, in the midst of The Times’ investigation of Logan’s eligibility, and said they first learned of the potential problem from an anonymous phone call in late February. They said they initiated an investigation that same day and found no evidence of rules violations.

But Logan, in an interview at her home Friday, said she told Luvina Beckley, San Bernardino’s basketball coach, about her eligibility situation “sometime before the first of the year.”

“(Beckley) told me she would look into it,” Logan said. “She also told me she spoke to the assistant athletic director about it.”

Logan maintained that San Bernardino Athletic Director David Suenram and assistant athletic director Nancy Simpson were also aware of the matter before Feb. 22, the date they claimed to have received the anonymous call.

Logan’s eligibility problem stems from her tryout with ADFB, a women’s professional team in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1991. Both Logan and ADFB officials have told The Times that the team bought her a round-trip plane ticket and paid her expenses while she was in Spain.

NCAA rules prohibit athletes from accepting such compensation after enrolling in college.

Logan previously attended Central Arizona College and played on that school’s conference championship team in 1988.

Questions have also been raised about her eligibility under the NCAA’s 4-2-4 transfer rule, based on her possibly having attended Cal State Dominguez Hills in 1986. If she had, she would have been required to sit out a year at San Bernardino or receive a degree from a junior college before being eligible to play at San Bernardino.

Dominguez Hills athletic officials said they have an eligibility form filled out and signed by Logan a month after the fall semester started in ’86.

Logan, however, said: “I enrolled in Dominguez but I never attended any classes. I never went to any practice with any of the team and I never played in any games with them.”

The possible violations by Logan--and the school’s apparent lack of thoroughness in its investigation--could lead to sanctions by the NCAA, including the forfeiture of games.

Meanwhile, Beckley has reversed the position she took at the May 17 news conference, and the coach now says Logan spoke to her about the issues in question soon after their first meeting last summer.

“Felice told me she purchased her own ticket to Spain,” Beckley said. “As for her attending Dominguez Hills, she told me she once had intentions of going there but that she didn’t. From the information she gave me, there was no violation.”

Asked if she had told anyone else in the athletic department that Logan had tried out in Spain, Beckley used as her answer the eligibility form Logan filed with San Bernardino.

Athletes are required to fill out an eligibility form at the beginning of every year, and these are designed to confirm their eligibility status.

According to San Bernardino officials, Logan never indicated that she had enrolled at Dominguez Hills or had played in Spain on her 1993 eligibility form.

Beckley says now that she left it to Logan to disclose the information and believed it wasn’t necessary to mention it to her superiors.

“There was no reason to,” Beckley said. “Every athlete is responsible for what they put on their eligibility form. I felt there was no need to tell them because Felice told me she didn’t commit any violations.”

Logan said that a meeting on the matter was held “before the first of the year,” involving herself, Beckley, Suenram and Simpson.

“We all got together to talk about it,” Logan said. “(Simpson) had the rule book sitting right in front of her and she looked up everything I did. (She said) they were clearly defined in the rules as not being violations. They told me I was fine to play.”

Both Suenram and Simpson have denied that they held any such meeting before Feb. 22, and denied any knowledge of Logan’s possible violations before that date. When asked about the meeting cited by Logan, Simpson said: “(Logan) has said that that has transpired, and I don’t want to contradict her. Yeah, if I have to answer, the meeting took place according to the press handout we distributed (on May 17).”

At that news conference, Suenram--saying that his action had nothing to do with the Logan case--resigned as San Bernardino’s athletic director effective in March of 1995.

“My planning for retirement goes back before any of this,” Suenram said. “Nobody pressured me, but this led me to believe this is a good time to do it.”