Northridge Moving Cautiously on Proposal 16

Cal State Northridge coaches are wrestling with the ruling last week by a federal judge that ordered the NCAA to dismantle its policy of using test scores to determine eligibility for Division I freshmen athletes.

Northridge coaches on Wednesday were greeted with a memo from compliance officer Kathleen Heitzman, stating it is “strongly recommended that you proceed with recruiting as if Proposal 16 was still in place.”

After speaking with NCAA officials, Heitzman believes the ruling to eliminate test scores from eligibility requirements might change before the signing period begins on April 7.

“It gives the NCAA three weeks to decide what to do before it has any real effect,” Heitzman said. “If a [student-athlete] signs on the basis of the SAT not being used, and the rule changes before school starts in August, the [student-athlete] would not be eligible.”

Under Prop. 16, prospective student-athletes must graduate from high school with a minimum grade-point average and minimum scores of 820 for the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and 68 for the American College Test (ACT).

The judge ruled the test requirements were unfair to black student-athletes.

Heitzman said reaction from Northridge coaches was varied.

“A coach could ignore the advice in my memo,” she said.

Bobby Braswell, men’s basketball coach at Northridge, believes it is high time the NCAA did away with the SAT requirement.

“The NCAA put itself in a position of enforcing rules that are unfair to African-Americans,” Braswell said. “That was a mistake.

“I am not opposed to there being standards to get into school. But there should not be so much weight on test scores that are culturally biased.

“You can’t fault a young man or young lady who attends a school that doesn’t have resources of suburban schools. They go to class, get a good GPA, then are told their B average isn’t as good as someone else’s B average.”

Braswell is looking to add two players during the signing period.

He said dropping the SAT requirement has expanded the pool of recruits

“We are looking at some young men who earlier we couldn’t look at,” Braswell said. “A recruit still has to meet Cal State Northridge admission requirements.”

There’s the catch, said Ron Ponciano, Northridge’s football coach.

“We are not going to bend and most institutions that have credibility aren’t going to bend,” Ponciano said.

“If you do not meet the minimum [SAT or ACT scores] there are no exemptions [at Northridge]. Our requirements are a little bit harder [than what the NCAA mandates].”

Ponciano acknowledged that his program probably would not be affected proportionally as Northridge teams with smaller rosters filled predominantly by minority athletes, such as men’s and women’s basketball.

“Not getting one or two [recruits] is not going to devastate us,” Ponciano said. “We’ll still put a competitive team on the field.”

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The Cal State Northridge baseball team, winner of six of its last seven games, will play six games this weekend in the Texas A&M; tournament.

Northridge (17-14) opens against Michigan at 1 p.m. (CST) Friday, the first meeting between the two schools. The Matadors play games against UNLV and Texas A&M; on Saturday, UNLV on Sunday, and Michigan and Texas A&M; on Monday.

Matt Synhorst leads Northridge with a .368 batting average. Dan Phillips has team-high totals of 12 home runs and 46 RBIs.

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Cal Lutheran’s baseball team is batting .370 and has scored 190 runs in 15 games. Eight players are batting over .400 and another six are in the .300s.

So, they are 15-0, right?

Not really.

Cal Lutheran, perennially among the nation’s top Division III teams, is 11-4 and has lost two of 12 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference games.

It’s not that the Kingsmen’s pitching is poor. The batting statistics are inflated because some opponents are very weak.

Cal Lutheran swept a three-game series from Occidental by a combined score of 65-7 and a three-game series from Cal Tech by a combined score of 63-9.

Those were conference games.

Sometime soon the SCIAC needs to rethink its membership. Either dump the guys who are more at home with slide rules than sliding pants, or tell Cal Lutheran and other heavyweights to form a conference for teams that have championship aspirations.

As is, there’s more disparity than the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins. And that’s not good for either side, even if it does make for gaudy numbers.

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Although most high school baseball players from the region stay in California for college, there is enough surplus talent to bolster Nevada and Nevada Las Vegas.

Infielder Justin Martin of El Camino Real High is batting .436 for Nevada (16-7). . Teammate Matt Rainer, a left-hander from Royal, is 5-2 in seven appearances and leads the team with 29 strikeouts in 37 innings.

UNLV catcher Ryan Hamill, from Chaminade, is batting .378 with six home runs and Nathan Kaup, from Camarillo, a transfer from Oklahoma State, is batting .360. Right-hander Bill Scheffels of Simi Valley is 1-0 and leads UNLV with 12 appearances.

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Canyons plays at Pierce today in a baseball battle for first place in the Western State Conference South Division.

Canyons ranks second and Pierce is third in run production among WSC teams.

Mike Granger of Canyons ranks fifth in the WSC with a .552 batting average. Sergio Franco ranks second with three home runs.

Pierce Left-hander Wes Crown, from Kennedy, is 2-0 with 18 strikeouts in 13 innings.

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Tony Hoggatts of Glendale has been selected co-player of the year in California Community College men’s basketball.

Hoggatts, a 6-foot-5 sophomore guard, averaged 14.6 points and helped Glendale (30-4) reach the Southern California Regional final.

Hoggatts shared the award with Jamal Tinsley of Mt. San Jacinto.

Le’Tre Kelly, a 6-6 sophomore at Antelope Valley, was selected to the all-state team.

Staff writers Fernando Dominguez, Steve Henson and Vince Kowalick contributed to this notebook.