LaChappa Remains Hospitalized

A 20-year-old minor league pitcher remained hospitalized in critical condition Sunday in Upland after collapsing of a heart attack during a game the night before.

Matt LaChappa of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes collapsed while warming up in the bullpen Saturday night in the fourth inning of a home game against the San Bernardino Stampede.

The heart attack was due to an enlarged heart, said Patti Geye, the team’s director of marketing.

A nursing supervisor at San Antonio Community Hospital said LaChappa’s condition had not changed overnight. No other information was being released, at the request of LaChappa’s family.

Tennis

After a decade of trying, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario finally won the Family Circle Cup, beating surprise finalist Barbara Paulus at Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Sanchez Vicario won, 6-2, 2-6, 6-2, to earn the $200,000 first prize in the year’s opening clay court tournament.

Paulus made the final by topping two-time defending champion and No. 1 seed Conchita Martinez, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4. Sanchez Vicario, 24, defeated Jana Novotna in the semifinals, held the same day because rain washed them out a day earlier.

Miscellany

Football players recruited to play for the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I., are favored in the admissions process to the Naval Academy, according to the Washington Post.

The taxpayer-supported prep school exists primarily to prepare minority students and fleet sailors to enter the academy, according to a Defense Department mission statement. But in recent years it also has trained football players and other athletes recruited by Naval Academy coaches.

The academy sent 234 students to NAPS last summer. Among them were 87 minorities, 55 previously enlisted servicemen and 71 recruited athletes. Sixteen of the 71 athletes are minorities. At a cost of $27,000 per student, NAPS groomed more than 50% of the players on Navy’s 1995 and 1994 varsity football rosters. Most of the Navy football players from NAPS are white.

Some football players have entered the prep school in recent years with Scholastic Assessment Test scores below 900 out of a possible 1,600, high enough to compete in varsity sports as freshmen under NCAA rules but far below the 1,225 average of all Naval Academy students.

Jack Renard, the academy’s dean of admissions, calls NAPS “an absolute success story,” noting that without it, he could not possibly meet Navy goals to boost minority representation at the academy to 29% (it’s now 19%) by 2004.

But some critics in the federal government and higher education have questioned whether NAPS and similar schools operated by the U.S. Military and Air Force academies should be in the business of helping academically deficient athletes enter the academies at taxpayer expense.

School officials say they help attract students who have physical and mental attributes that cannot be taught. “Do I want the [high] SAT [scorer] jumping in the back of my cockpit or do I want the quarterback who has very quick at reflexes?” said Capt. Randy Hess, NAPS’s commanding officer.

Holly McPeak and Nancy Reno defeated Liz Masakayan and Angela Rock, 15-8, to win the $50,000 MCI Open women’s pro beach volleyball event at Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Glen Dubis and Rob Harbison shot their way onto the U.S. Olympic 3x40 rifle team at Atlanta. Dubis finished the three-day match with an overall score of 3,692.2 points out of a possible 3,818 and Harbison was second overall with 3,679.1.

One of two women indicted with Dallas Cowboy wide receiver Michael Irvin on drug charges is now accused of misdemeanor assault following a traffic accident in Dallas, police said. Jasmine Nabwangu, 21, of Irving, likely will be issued a citation for allegedly slapping a woman motorist after a collision Saturday, police said.