VALLEY-AREA COLLEGE NOTEBOOK : CLU Comes Away Empty in Baseball

For the third straight year, the Cal Lutheran baseball season ended in disappointing fashion.

This year, the Kingsmen blew a two-game lead in the best-of-five NCAA Division III West Regional against UC San Diego. The previous two years, Cal Lutheran reached the Division III World Series as the No. 1-seeded team only to come away empty. Cal Lutheran lost in the championship game in 1992.

“This is very disappointing, but I don’t think anything can take the place of a game in which you have a chance to win the national championship,” said first-year Coach Marty Slimak, who was an assistant in ’92 and ’93.

The Kingsmen (31-9-1) lost the fifth game against UC San Diego by blowing a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning. The keys to the Tritons’ six-run inning were an error by shortstop Ed Castillo and a misplay by pitcher Marc Weiss that was ruled an error, then a hit.

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CLU’s problem throughout the series was pitching depth, or lack thereof. Sam Arroyo (3.46 earned-run average during the regional) and Weiss (2.31) pitched well, but the rest of the staff had a 9.13 ERA.

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Track and field: When Isaiah Mustafa of Moorpark finished second in the decathlon with a school record of 6,722 points in the state championships at Cerritos College last month, it marked the fifth year in a row that a Raider athlete had finished among the top five in that event. Mustafa was the runner-up in last year’s championships with 6,417 points. Previous Moorpark placers were Jeff Ingalls (third in ’92 with 6,241), Jerry Edwards (fifth in ’91 with 6,489) and Gil Carillo (fifth in ’90 with 6,359).