Holiwell, Shown the Door by Arizona, Lands at USC

Marques Holiwell made it look easy last June when he ran away with the State 100-meter title as a senior at Bakersfield West High.

With a scholarship offer from Arizona, Holiwell then had a productive summer, winning the U.S. junior national championship and six times running 10.45 seconds or better in the 100.

“I was all set to go to Arizona but they kept telling me that they had not received my [high school] transcripts,” Holiwell said. “Then, a couple of days before I was to leave for school [last August], they called and told me that I was not accepted.”

Although Holiwell qualified academically under NCAA guidelines, Arizona decided that his grades did not meet school standards and that he should enroll at a junior college for a semester.

Holiwell enrolled at Bakersfield College, but he also gave up on Arizona.

He contacted USC track Coach Ron Allice and will be a Trojan in the spring semester.

“USC was always my first choice, but they did not recruit me as a senior,” said Holiwell, who had a 2.60 grade-point average at Bakersfield College. “When they showed interest in me, it was an easy decision to make.”

The only problem was that Holiwell had enrolled full-time at Bakersfield and NCAA rules do not allow athletes to compete within the same school year in such a case.

So Holiwell will red-shirt at USC and run unattached, starting with the Los Angeles Invitational indoor meet Feb. 24 at the Sports Arena.

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Holiwell is not the only recent recruit the Trojans will feature at the L.A. Invitational. In his second season at USC, Allice has assembled a team that includes Brandon Pacheco, a freshman miler who finished second in the U.S. junior championships last summer in the 1,500 meters; Ramsey Jay, a 400-meter runner from Ventura High who won the high school 500 meters in last year’s meet; Jerome Davis, a freshman from Ridgecrest Burroughs who finished third in the State 400 meters; and Isaac Turner, last year’s State junior college champion at 800 meters.

USC also has Bengt Johanssen, a hammer thrower from Sweden, who will join collegiate record holder Balazs Kiss this spring, and Kehinde Aladefa, the two-time defending Pacific 10 Conference 110-meter high hurdles champion.

UCLA, runner-up in last year’s NCAA championship meet in both men’s and women’s divisions, will also have a strong team in the L.A. Invitational.

Ato Boldon, third in last year’s World Championship 100 meters and the defending NCAA 200-meter champion, will run against Holiwell in the 50 meters, and Mebratom Keflezighi, who finished fifth in the NCAA 5,000 meters as a freshman last season, in the two-mile.

Other Bruins expected to compete are shotputter Mark Parlin, who finished third in last year’s NCAA meet; pole vaulter Scott Slover, who vaulted higher than 18-feet last season as a freshman; high jumper Rich Pitchford, last season’s Pac-10 champion; and 400-meter runner Ibrahim Hassan, who finished second in the Pac-10.

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University Beat Notes

Under first-year Coach Glenn Bassett, Pepperdine’s men’s tennis team extended its home-court winning streak to 35 matches with victories over St. Mary’s, UC Santa Barbara, Nevada Las Vegas and Pacific to begin the season 4-0. The Waves, ranked seventh nationally, have not lost a match at home since San Diego State beat them, 6-3, in April of 1993.

UCLA, the defending NCAA men’s volleyball champion, won the UC Santa Barbara Invitational last weekend with a victory over the Gauchos in the final, 15-7, 15-5, 14-16, 17-16. Junior Matt Noonan had a career-high 26 kills and 10 digs to lead the Bruins, who will play in the Outrigger Hotels Invitational this weekend at Hawaii. The Bruins will meet Penn State in a rematch of last season’s final on Thursday and then Ball State in a rematch of last year’s semifinals on Friday. UCLA will play Hawaii on Saturday.

UCLA’s swimming team, ranked tenth nationally, will hold one of the top meets in the nation on Friday when the Bruins go against Stanford, California and USC at the Sunset Canyon Recreational Center. UCLA will compete against Cal and USC in a double dual meet, while No. 1 Stanford swims against the Trojans, who are tied at No. 7.