Irvine Valley Is Laying the Groundwork for Baseball in 2001

Irvine Valley has hired a baseball coach and plans to have its first team next year, Athletic Director Aracely Mora said Friday.

Stacy Parker, an assistant at San Diego State the last two years who was at Orange Coast for five seasons before that, will be the Lasers’ first coach.

Parker, who played at Foothill High and UC Irvine, started teaching a baseball class at Irvine Valley this semester.

Parker figures to have his program up and running by the time summer league games start in June.

“It’s awesome,” Parker, 32, said. “It’s exciting to be part of something brand new. It’s also nice to be back in Orange County.”

Irvine Valley hopes to join the Orange Empire Conference, which currently has a bye in each schedule day because it has seven members--Cypress, Fullerton, Golden West, Orange Coast, Riverside, Saddleback and Santa Ana.

Final approval for the Irvine Valley team to join the OEC is expected at the conference meeting in March.

Having been at OCC, Parker is well aware of how difficult it will be to compete in the state’s strongest conference; the OEC has won six of the last nine state titles.

But, he said, “That’s the best way to do it. You get instant credibility by being in that conference.”

Mora said establishing a baseball program has been a quest since she was hired in the summer of 1991.

“I’ve been looking forward to this since my first day on campus,” she said.

Parker said he already has designed a logo and had hats made up so the team has an identity on campus. But his next move is a little more challenging. He needs to help raise about $300,000 to build a field on a vacant lot on the Irvine Valley campus.

HOME COURT ADVANTAGE?

Basketball coaches and players go on and on about the importance of winning at home.

But the truth is, it didn’t happen all that often in the first round of Orange Empire Conference play.

Even with home teams winning all four men’s games on the final day of the first round Wednesday, visiting teams still held a 15-13 edge in the first half.

The visitors are ahead, 16-12, in women’s games.

The Cypress men’s team is on the cutting edge of the odd trend. The Chargers won five of seven first-round games but both losses came at home. Cypress was 3-0 on the road in the first half.

RICH GET RICHER

Amanda Siler, who helped La Habra to the Division II state title in 1998, has left Santa Clara University and will play volleyball at Golden West, Rustler Coach Albert Gasparian said.

Siler, the Division II player of the year as a senior setter at La Habra, joins a program that has won seven consecutive state titles, is unbeaten the last two seasons and is expected to return four starters.