Bell Tolls for Sports at Mission

Faced with enormous financial constraints, Mission College on Wednesday dropped its modest but competitive athletic program.

“We are done, unless we can get some community involvement,” said John Klitsner, Mission’s athletic director and former baseball coach.

Mission fielded five teams--baseball, men’s soccer, men’s golf and men’s and women’s cross-country. The school planned to add softball next spring.

The athletic program stood on shaky ground after Mission received about $9 million from the Los Angeles Community College District to operate next school year, Klitsner said.

That represented about a $3 million shortfall from what Mission received last school year.

After covering the essential operating costs, Klitsner said the school had about $67,000 in non-allocated funds to distribute, with 10 groups--including the athletic department--vying for the money.

Klitsner said an athletic budget of $180,000 was approved in the spring but he later slashed it to $105,000. He cut it to $35,000 for the fall only.

“I asked them to give us enough to survive,” Klitsner said. “The coaches would have to fund raise [for money] besides their salaries and [the coaches] said yes.”

Klitsner said the athletic program was eliminated after much confusion.

The budget committee met Monday, Klitsner said, and 10 members voted on who would receive all or a portion of the non-allocated funds.

Klitsner asked for the $35,000 and said athletics were top-ranked when the vote was taken, followed by hourly instruction.

William Norlund, president of the school, said that 60% of Mission’s classes are taught by hourly instructors. Norlund said the school is cutting about 200 classes.

“I got word on Tuesday that people found fault in the tabulation of the votes,” Klitsner said. “[Wednesday] we have another meeting and nobody has the ballots [from Monday] and nobody has the minutes.

“There was a motion presented that we reverse athletics to No. 2 and hourly instruction to No. 1. . . . Then there’s a motion to determine the dollar amount going to hourly instruction. This motion failed.

“The last motion was to give athletics $35,000. That motion failed because there was no time frame on it. We couldn’t even pay salaries with that.”

Norlund said the confusion with the voting on Monday, done on a point system, was caused by a misunderstanding.

“Basically, it changed because they made a mistake in the method they used to tabulate the votes,” Norlund said. “They took an average of the points instead of the total points. . . . I remember athletics had 20 points and hourly instruction had 26 points.”

That method derailed athletics at Mission and left at least one coach searching for answers.

“I don’t feel bad for myself but I feel so bad for my kids,” said Adolfo Perez, soccer coach the past two seasons. “Ninety-five percent of my kids are in school because of soccer. They need to go to college, it’s their only way out.

“The last two weeks I’ve been frozen, I haven’t been taking kids in to register [because of the uncertainty]. If this goes through then it’s time for me to leave the Valley and go where there’s soccer,” Perez added.

Perez had recruited 22 new players, including four members of The Times’ 1996-97 All-Region team. Many of those players would have tried out at Northridge or received Matador scholarships had that program not been cut.

Mission’s soccer team was 12-4-2 and made the playoffs in 1995. It went 9-6-6 and barely missed the postseason last year with a third-place WSC finish. It was the only junior college men’s team in the Valley.

Klitsner, who has tenure, said he probably will teach physical education and health at Mission.

“They can’t cut me but it’ll cut a lot of bucks out of my pocket,” he said.

Staff writer Tris Wykes contributed to this story.