Regional to Pit Olds Friends Snow, Garrido

One of the more intriguing coaching matchups of the first round of the NCAA regional baseball playoffs Friday will take place at Stanford.

Long Beach State (35-21) will meet Texas (34-24), bringing together 49er Coach Dave Snow and Longhorn Coach Augie Garrido for the first time on the field since Garrido left Cal State Fullerton after the 1996 season.

Snow played for Garrido at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, then became an assistant coach for him after Garrido moved to Fullerton in 1973.

Snow was Garrido’s top assistant and recruiting coordinator through 1977 before Snow moved to Los Angeles Valley College in 1978. After winning four conference titles and being named national community college coach of the year, Snow returned to Fullerton and helped Garrido coach the Titans to the 1984 College World Series championship.

“You never feel good about playing against someone you respect so much in this kind of situation,” Garrido said. “That’s the first thing I thought about when the pairings were announced.

“Dave was a key factor in the development of our program in the early years at Fullerton. The contribution he made to our 1984 national championship team was difficult to measure. He was our pitching coach, but his effect went way beyond that.”

Snow said he also has mixed emotions about the game.

“We’ve competed against each other a lot, but this is a different scenario with it being a regional,” Snow said. “I owe him a lot since he gave me my first job in coaching. I have the highest regard for him as a coach and as a person. I hope he wins all his games--except when he plays us.”

Snow and Garrido became opponents for the first time in 1985, when Snow moved to Loyola Marymount as head coach, and the rivalry resumed on a regular basis after Snow moved to Long Beach and Garrido returned to Fullerton after spending three years at Illinois.

Their teams were 3-3 against each other when Snow was at Loyola, and Garrido had an 11-10 advantage against Snow’s Long Beach State teams.

Texas, which reached the College World Series under Garrido last season, finished third in the Big 12 Conference this season despite injuries to several key players.

Long Beach finished third in the Big West, three games behind Fullerton and a game behind UC Santa Barbara.

Taken to Hart

It was no secret that NCAA officials were unhappy that last week’s Division III West Regional baseball tournament was held at Orange’s Hart Park, which presented a number of problems, not the least of which was the condition of the playing surface.

In 11 games, the six competing teams combined to commit 43 errors, an average of nearly four per game, plus a number of bobbles, missteps and bad-hop hits.

The tree-lined park provided a pretty backdrop for hitters, but graffiti was visible on the left-field fence and around the rickety bleachers behind home plate. On Saturday and Sunday, smoke from picnic barbecues wafted across the playing field, and an occasional foul ball risked injuring children in the park.

Chapman Coach Rex Peters said he had hoped the Panthers could lease Goodwin Field for the event, but Fullerton was hosting Long Beach State. Hart Park is Chapman’s home field.

The NCAA reluctantly accepted Chapman’s bid to host after three California teams qualified for postseason play. According to several Chapman officials, the NCAA reasoned it could save on travel expenses by keeping those teams in the state. The other bid came from Linfield, Ore., which did not have a team in the tournament.

Chapman Athletic Director Dave Currey said he had to scramble to find volunteers to staff the four-day tournament because there was no budget to pay for them.

The Panthers have an agreement with the City of Orange that costs the university about $3,000 a month to maintain the field at Hart Park, according to Currey. Much of the daily grooming is done by baseball players at practice.

Currey said Chapman is in the midst of fund-raising campaign and hopes to have $300,000 within the next five years to upgrade the playing surface. However, there are no plans to build a fence around the diamond for better safety, to build restroom facilities or improve seating.

Notables

Jared Stock, formerly of Mission Viejo High, will throw the javelin for Cal State Los Angeles; Lutz Braun, formerly of Brea Olinda, will run in the 3,000-meter steeplechase for Cal Poly Pomona and Mara Caples, formerly of El Dorado High and Orange Coast College will compete in the 3,000 and 5,000-meter runs for Cal State Dominguez Hills this weekend at the NCAA Division II track and field finals at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. . . . Kareen Nilsson will represent UC Irvine in the 10,000-meter run at the NCAA Division I track and field finals May 31 at Eugene, Ore. Her time of 33:48.59 at the Mt. San Antonio Relays is the second-best in Anteater history and is the seventh-best in the nation this year. . . . Jason Lowery has resigned as men’s basketball coach at Hope International to become an assistant at his alma mater, Pomona Pitzer. Lowery, 25, had a record of 20-44 in two seasons. He graduated from Pomona Pitzer in 1997 and also coached at Redlands. . . . UC Irvine finished second to UC Santa Barbara in competition for the Big West Conference Commissioner’s Cup, presented to the conference school with the best overall results in the 18 men’s and women’s sports sponsored by the conference. Santa Barbara won conference championships in three sports and finished second in four others. UC Irvine won championships in men’s basketball and men’s

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Staff writer Paul McLeod contributed to this report.