Coaches Honored as Programs Struggle

The UC Riverside and Cal Poly Pomona baseball programs are at the bottom of the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. standings this season, but their coaches--one current, the other former--have come in for some recent recognition.

Riverside Coach Jack Smitheran won his 900th game on March 18, boosting his record to 900-628-3 in 29 years of coaching--25 of those with Riverside and four at Emporia State in Kansas.

And former Pomona coach John Scolinos was named the NCAA Division II “Coach of the Century” by Collegiate Baseball magazine.

Said Smitheran of No. 900, “I guess with longevity, that’s something that happens. I never planned on this profession, but by hook and crook I ended up going from playing at Arizona State to coaching. It’s a great job. You get to go to a field every day and play a ballgame with good kids.”

Smitheran has won two national championships at Riverside, in 1977 and 1982, and won more than 40 games a season four times. But he says that perhaps the most personally satisfying point occurred during the 1975 season, when his team finished 28-24.

“There are so many high points, but when we beat Stanford in 1975 in the [Riverside] tournament, I think that kind of made people take notice, and let people know, that we had a good thing going here,” he said.

The Highlanders have struggled with their youth this season and are 8-16 and 3-8 in CCAA games.

“I would rather have the club doing well, playing to the level we expected before the season and have the kids enjoying it than something personal like the 900,” Smitheran said. “It’s been a real learning experience.”

Cal Poly Pomona, at 11-11 and 5-8, is struggling to stay ahead of the Highlanders, but the program got a nice boost when John Scolinos was named the NCAA Division II “Coach of the Century” by Collegiate Baseball magazine.

The former coach retired after 30 seasons in 1991 as the winningest coach in Division II with a 1,198-949 record and three national championships.

Lou Pavlovich, publisher of Collegiate Baseball, said that in his opinion, Scolinos was “undoubtedly the most popular coach to come along in college baseball.”

Neither team seems to have a reasonable shot at catching first-place Cal State San Bernardino, whose only problems in conference play are coming from Cal State El Nino.

San Bernardino is 9-1 in the CCAA and ranked eighth among NCAA Division II schools with a 13-5 overall record.

Cal State Dominguez Hills is a distant second at 5-4 (10-10), and no other teams are over .500.

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The Claremont-Mudd men’s swim team placed fourth at the NCAA Division III championships in St. Louis on the strength of Gary Simon’s performances.

Simon broke his own Division III record in the 200-meter individual medley by two seconds with a time of 1 minute 46.97 seconds. He also won the 200 breaststroke, placed second in the 200 butterfly and was voted the Division III swimmer of the year by the coaches at the meet.

His success is all the more remarkable, considering that Simon lost his father to leukemia earlier this school year.

College Division Notes

In Division II men’s swimming, Cal State Bakersfield easily won the national championship at Canton, Ohio. The Roadrunners finished with 730 points, far out-distancing second-place Drury of Missouri. . . . Azusa Pacific’s loss to eventual NAIA champion Georgetown of Kentucky in the semifinals of the NAIA men’s basketball tournament capped the most successful season in school history. The Cougars finished the season ranked third with a 34-5 record, and had a 17-game winning streak before that semifinal loss. The team had seven seniors. . . . Kirran Moss of Cal State Los Angeles won the NCAA Division II indoor title in the shotput with a put of 47 feet 6 1/4 inches at Indianapolis last week. . . . Rino Marconi, an all-conference quarterback at Redlands in 1996, will play football for the Styrian Longhorns of the Austrian League this spring.