Wednesday, August 08, 2007

GOING, GOING AND GONES: SOME NINER FACES ARE TRADING PLACES

When August rolls around 49erville you expect the usual comings and goings and the Summer of ’07 is no exception, except for this exception, a good many of the going, going gones are Long Beach State staffers.

It started a couple of weeks ago in track and field when two of the best assistants in years (in almost any sport), Yvonne Scott-Williams and Matt Roe both bailed on the Beach for richly deserved head coaching jobs. Ms. Scott-Williams has been named the Head Track & Field Coach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas after three years of building the medal collecting efforts of the quick and leaping 49er sprinters and hurdlers. Mr. Roe coached long striding distance runners and cross country teams also for the past three years and has been named head coach for both track and cross country at Butler University.

Ironically the talented LB sports info assistant for cross country, men's volleyball and softball, Andrea Ohta, is also on the move. She is off to San Diego State where she will inform on the Aztecs women's swimming and diving, water polo, women's tennis, and will assist with women's basketball and volleyball. She just picked up a Masters in Sports Management from the new and highly successful sports management program at LBSU.

Last of LBSU On the Move is venerable trainer Dan Bailey. A legend among athletic trainers, when he wasn’t patrolling sidelines and pool decks with a steely eye, Bails was an inventor of a line of training room products that are sold around the world. In his 36 years at the Beach, in addition to working with the 49er athletes, he has been extensively involved with Olympic teams in rowing, water polo and sailing and set up an educational program with students from Japan.

NOTES ON MY FLORIDA NAPKIN--New Long Beach state basketball coach Dan Monson has a mailbox now for he and his family, and it is in nearby Rossmoor. Rumor has it that our basketball coaches stay busy in the summer but actually don’t begin real work until the 49ers home opener against BYU on November 10. Last add Dan M. …likely he will be the elephant in that Indianapolis NCAA chamber hearing the complaints about extra benefits to men’s basketball players during the Larry Reynolds error, er, ah, era. CSULB has offered a range of sanctions for themselves and they hope that the charm and credibility of President King Alexander, who cleaned up a mess at Murray State, and Coach Monson, who did the cleaning hoops at Minnesota. AD Vic Cegles and three other LBSU staff will plead for the home team and then wait about a month for the final findings to come down. Six JUCO players are the center of the issue with a dismissed assistant coach at the heart of the infractions.

Team titles for baseball and golf are hard to get but individual accomplishments continue to make the news. 49er Sophomore to be Michael Drake has qualified for the 2007 US Golf Amateur at The Olympic Club August 20-26, baseball’s Danny Espinosa is still traveling with Team USA through August 12, and Shane Peterson made the all star team in the Cape league.

Rounding the other bases, you got to love the team names in the Frontier League,
River City Rascals, Windy City Thunderbolts, Washington Wild Things, Gateway Grizzlies, Slippery Rock Sliders, and my personal favorite, the Traverse City Beach Bums.

Really Last add…around LA the Trojan pub machine is playing up their number one pre-season poll position but experts down south, that LA is Lower Alabama and their favorite USC is coached by Steve Spurrier, think that Troy may lose as many as three games, at Nebraska early, against Oregon at Autzen and Arizona State in Tempe.

Best sports show in town is always the LB Century Club meetings. This week former Olympic gold medalist in the pole vault, Bob Seagren, captured the old salts. Seagren is the leader of the admin pack for the upcoming Long Beach Marathon put on by his International City Racing company. Bob said that he got started in the sport when he and his brother Art would play a private little game as a kid back in Pomona. “We took our pole vault and the idea was to cover our whole block of Town Avenue without touching the ground. So we would go from a roof, to a tree, to a garage…” The neighbors, Bob said, were happy when the boys vaulted off to college.

Our closing quote is from the Tampa Bay Devil Ray top prospect Evan Longoria. A first round pick of Tampa Bay, he was just moved up to their Durham Bulls AAA team. “Things have been going well,” Longoria said, “but I try not to get too caught up in the numbers. I’m just trying to remain consistent on a daily basis. If you do that, the numbers will show that in the end.” And that end should be a September call up to the big club.” --DR. DAN

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home