Courting Fun and Competition at Irvine Valley College Tournament

What happens when your basketball team is invited to the national championship, but your school can’t afford the trip?

Mikel Bistany came up with the answer: “We brought the nationals to us.”

Bistany teaches adaptive education at Irvine Valley College, and also coaches the women’s wheelchair basketball team he started there four years ago.

This week the college is hosting the national Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Tournament, with help from the city of Irvine. Because there aren’t that many teams in the country--less than a dozen active--everybody gets invited to the nationals. Eight teams are competing, including one from Mexico.

“Our goal is to go to the nationals next year no matter where they are,” Bistany says.

Bistany, 34, is thankful his team gets to play at all. You think women’s sports doesn’t get the respect it deserves? Try women’s wheelchair sports.

“Transportation, equipment and just finding gym time, these are always headaches in wheelchair basketball,” Bistany says. The first two years of the Irvine Valley College Lasers, the college didn’t have its own gymnasium. Bistany had to compete with other sports to find area gym time, and fight off a few preconceived notions about the sport, such as: Will those wheelchairs damage our floor?

“They leave streaks, but those rub right off,” Bistany insists. “Wheelchairs do less damage to a gym floor than all the constant pounding by able-bodied athletes. The only damage is to our own players’ wheelchairs. They bang the heck out of ‘em.”

The defending champs are the Rolling Timberwolves from Minnesota. Their coach, Perry Hendricks, warns new spectators that “this is no Special Olympics, no huggy kind of thing. This is all out, full-blown war.”

Not all players have the same physical ability, and the rules try to assure that teams are balanced. But, Timberwolves player Deb Sunderman says, referring to a defensive maneuver: “Even if you can’t throw or shoot that well, maybe you can set picks. In our sport those picks are just as important as scoring.”

It looks like Bistany and his staff have already scored big. The competition started Wednesday and runs through the finals on Saturday afternoon.

Chuck & Friends: Best line of the night at the Academy Awards show might have been Robin Williams calling Orange County’s Chuck Jones the “Orson Welles of animation.”

Jones, responsible for such a motley group of characters as Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote, was honored with a special Oscar. If you missed his acceptance, here’s part of it:

“What can I say in the face of such humiliating evidence [after some of his work was shown]. I stand guilty before the world of directing over 300 cartoons the last 50 or 60 years. Hopefully this [award] means you’ve forgiven me.

“In 1931, I came stumbling out of the Chouinard Art Institute into the arid maelstrom of the Great Depression. . . . A miracle occurred so staggeringly unexpected I find it incredible even today: Somebody offered to pay me to draw. . . . My deepest thanks for this signal and shining award, and my love to Marian [his wife] and Linda [his daughter] and to the laughing denizens of Termite Terrorists [his original drawing partners], wherever you are.”

Arnie & Friend: Who’s the most famous golfer to ever live in Orange County? Most likely Tiger Woods of Cypress, unless you count O.J. Simpson. But the richest golfer--even if you do count Simpson--has to be Mark O’Meara, who grew up playing at Mission Viejo Country Club.

O’Meara is fourth on this year’s PGA Tour money list, and Golf Digest once listed him in the top five on the tour in off-course income, at several million a year.

O’Meara and Woods will be among the competitors teeing it up April 11 for the Masters at Augusta National in Georgia. Golf World this week reports that Woods, a Stanford University sophomore, already has some of his plans set for the week. He and Arnold Palmer have agreed to a Monday practice round together, followed by lunch.

Namedrops: The newest California Angel is one I never expected: George Anderson . . . goes by the nickname “Sparky.” Sparky Anderson, long-time manager for the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers, has signed on to do commentary on 31 home Angel games for cable’s Prime Time Sports. English is not Sparky’s strong point, but his love of the game is. He’s likely to make it a great season of TV baseball. . . .

It’s Quayle to speak at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda on April 12. Marilyn, not Dan. She’s promoting her new novel, “The Campaign,” written with her sister, Nancy Tucker Northcott. It’s about a conservative presidential candidate wrongly accused of murder. . . .

It’s Edward James Olmos at Planet Hollywood in Santa Ana tonight. The restaurant hosts the awards for the Newport Beach International Film Festival, and Olmos gets his handprints in cement there. . . .

There’s a private party at Disneyland tonight but Marilyn MacDougal says most of you are invited. She’s executive director of Drug Abuse Is Life Abuse/Project:No Gangs. It’s joining the DARE police drug program for a Disneyland night (8:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.) for $21 per person. Profits go toward the programs, and MacDougal says anyone is welcome who supports their philosophies.

Wrap-Up: My own favorite line from Chuck Jones over the years: “Every night when I go to bed I want to wake up as Bugs Bunny. Instead, like most of us, when I wake up I’m still Daffy Duck.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.