No Minor Accomplishments

There’s no arguing that football and basketball have put USC and UCLA on the collegiate sports map.

But it’s in the other sports where Los Angeles-area schools, especially UCLA and USC, have dominated and served as training grounds for further athletic success.

In sports other than football and basketball, Long Beach State, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, UCLA and USC have produced nearly 200 national team championships, 381 Olympic medals, 79 tennis Grand Slam event winners and more than 150 major league baseball players.

USC baseball has had the most recognizable success. The Trojans have won 12 NCAA titles since 1948, sending 80 players to the major leagues.

Most famous among the Trojan baseball alumni are single-season home run champion Mark McGwire, two-time Cy Young Award winner Randy Johnson, Boston Red Sox and Angel star Fred Lynn and Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver.

But the most important name in Trojan baseball history isn’t one with a bust at Cooperstown. Coach Rod Dedeaux turned the program into a dynasty.

In his 45 years as coach, he led the Trojans to all but one of those championships, compiling a 1,332-571-11 record, second in NCAA Division I in victories.

Along with leading the Trojans to their first NCAA title, Dedeaux spearheaded the most dominant run in Division I baseball history, winning seven titles from 1968-78, including five in a row from 1970-74. He had 41 winning seasons in 45 years at USC.

One of Dedeaux’s pupils, Mike Gillespie, took over for Dedeaux in 1987, and led the Trojans to their most recent title, in 1998.

That season not only brought an NCAA title, but helped instigate perhaps the biggest rule change in collegiate baseball history.

After USC and Arizona State combined for 35 runs, 39 hits and nine home runs in the championship game, the NCAA ordered changes made to aluminum bats.

USC may have the NCAA titles and McGwire, but UCLA was home to perhaps the most important athlete in sports.

Westwood was the home of Jackie Robinson in the early 1940s. He was the school’s first four-sport letterman, but baseball was the sport he struggled with most. He had no trouble in his first game as a Bruin, however, getting four hits and stealing four bases, including home.

But Robinson, like all Bruin baseball players before and since, wasn’t able to win a national championship in his only season on the team. Despite its lack of on-the-field success, the impact of UCLA baseball has been felt throughout the major leagues, producing such players as Eric Karros, Troy Glaus and Yankee playoff hero Chris Chambliss.

Before USC in 1998, the last Division I Los Angeles school to win a baseball national championship was Pepperdine, which in 1992 defeated Cal State Fullerton in the only intrastate championship game in College World Series history.

Though baseball has the biggest names, it is in volleyball that L.A. has been most dominant on the court.

UCLA men’s Coach Al Scates is tops in all of collegiate coaching when it comes to winning championships. His 17 NCAA championships with one team is an NCAA record. He’s the only coach to win at least three consecutive NCAA championships three times. His three undefeated teams are the only undefeated teams in Division I men’s volleyball history. And his 966 victories are far and away the most of any volleyball coach at any level.

And Scates’ success has carried over to international competition. Scates’ pupils have won nine gold medals and one bronze at the Olympics, and pro beach volleyball owes most of the success it has experienced to former Bruin All-Americans Karch Kiraly and Sinjin Smith.

UCLA isn’t the only school to have found success at volleyball. USC, Pepperdine and Long Beach State have won nine men’s titles of their own.

Long Beach’s bigger success, however, has been its women’s team. Coach Brian Gimmillaro’s teams have won three NCAA titles since 1989 and four of his players have won six national player-of-the-year awards since 1988.

The volleyball court has been the scene of collegiate and international success, but to see the true international impact of Los Angeles collegiate athletics, one has to go to the track.

So many legends of track and field, including Rafer Johnson, Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Quincy Watts, Bob Seagren, Ato Boldon and Inger Miller, reached national and international prominence as collegians in Los Angeles.

Track stars from Southland colleges have won 141 Olympic medals, including 70 golds. Among the highlights are Griffith Joyner’s three golds and one silver in the 1988 Seoul Games, Joyner-Kersee’s domination of the heptathlon and former Bruin Johnson winning the decathlon gold medal in 1960.

The schools have been equally successful in the pool.

The medal count is nearly identical to the track--148 medals, 70 golds--and the feats just as impressive.

Tops among the swimmers is USC’s John Naber. After winning eight NCAA championships in three seasons, Naber went to Montreal in 1976 and won Olympic gold in the 100 backstroke, 200 backstroke, 800 freestyle relay and 400 medley relay, setting world records in all four, along with a silver in the 200 freestyle. Naber returned to USC for his senior season and picked up two more NCAA crowns.

In those same 1976 Olympics, UCLA’s Shirley Babashoff won one gold and four silvers--after winning a gold and two silvers in 1972. Both of her golds came as a member of world-record setting relay teams.

Some of other highlights from Los Angeles schools:

* UCLA’s Mitch Gaylord became the first American gymnast to score a perfect 10 in Olympic competition when he did so on the parallel bars during the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

* USC and UCLA have won men’s and women’s national water polo championships in the same academic year.

* Five former Bruins played on the 1994 U.S. men’s World Cup soccer team, which advanced to the second round for the first time.

* Long Beach State alumnus Mark O’Meara became the first golfer from the schools to win two PGA majors in the same year when he won the the Masters and the British Open last year.

* USC won eight NCAA team championships before any of the other schools won any. (UCLA won its first in men’s tennis in 1950). The Trojans won their first title in men’s track in 1926.

* Only one country--the United States--won more medals than USC and UCLA athletes’ 60 in 1984.

And there are many other examples of why, though they don’t get the fanfare or attention of football or basketball, these sports are the biggest reasons why Los Angeles is perhaps the nation’s top city for collegiate athletics.

*

COMING WEDNESDAY

The best of sports from 1900-1999 and a poll identifying the top athletes of the era form basis of a special section.