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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 1982)
New league a step up for women’s teams By Paul Danzer Of *w Emerald It may not be the big-time, but moving into the newly formed Northern Pacific Athletic Con ference (NorPac) is a step in the right direction for women's ath letics at Oregon. The women have set their sights on becoming a part of the Pac-10, according to Chris Voelz, women's athletic director and volleyball coach. But Voelz and other coaches at Oregon see the NorPac as the place to be today "I think that we re in the study stages and we will never give up that vision of being Pac-10," said Voelz. "It would be good for our track and field program, good for basketball, good for volleyball — good for everyone But, we don't want to lose scheduling commitments for all of our sports. And we can t af ford to fly our teams all over the nation, or all up and down the west coast." So Oregon has settled into a league with its neighbors at Oregon State, Washington and Washington State from the Northwest, and Fresno State, Pacific, San Francisco, Califor nia, San Jose State and Santa Clara from northern California The NorPac offers competi tion in nine NCAA Division I sports: basketball, cross country, field hockey, gymnas tics, softball, swimming and div ing , tennis, track and field, and volleyball On the financial side of the ledger, participating in the Nor Pac allows Oregon's women’s teams to participate at a com petitive level without having to spend bundles of money on high travel costs Also, it means they don't have to compete on the field or court with teams that are in another league financial ly Voelz said she has heard Joan Littlewood and Charles Chilton's ARENA THEATRE • 8 P.M. (Villard Hall) For tickets and information call 686-4191 PRESENTED BY UNIVERSITY THEATRE. v through the grapevine that Oregon would have been 10th in funding in the conference, had the Pac-10 schools been able to get together and form a woman's league. The formation of the NorPac on July 1 of this year ended a search by Oregon for a place to play That search began when the Association of Intercol legiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) became insignificant in the shadow of the National Col legiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which offered a full with football Finally, the Northwest schools linked up with the Northern California Athletic Conference, which was losing Stanford. "All of the Northwest schools were very important in terms of ap proaching the NorCal, ’’ said NorPac executive director Deanna Sciaraffa "It's interesting, in less than a year the NorCal grew into a team conference What they (the athletic directors) accom plished is really impressive,” said Sciaraffa of the quick for make one trip to California "It isn't totally fair," Heiny said of the point system, "Ob viously they need some kind of system. I would prefer a double round-robin.” But Heiny is looking forward to competing in the NorPac. One advantage he cited is hav ing a set schedule of top-quality teams "Playing California teams is also attractive, sspecially for our location The alayers would rather travel to California than to Montana and Idaho,” he said. "It costs me less, really, to fly to the Bay Area than it does to fly to Montana," said Voelz But one thing that does cost more is the dues Oregon must pay as a member of the conference. Those dues are around $6,000 a year as opposed to several hundred before, ac cording to Voelz But she and other coaches see it as money well spent In addition to having a full-time administrator, something they never had in Region 9, the NorPac also em ploys a full-time information dir ector "What has already helped is having an information director,” said Tom Heinonen, Oregon’s women's cross country and track coach. "They give a lot of awards," he said refering to the naming of "Athlete of the Week" and similar awards “That kind of publicity is doing us all a favor.” By giving a lot of awards, and publicizing athletes, Heinonen said the conference will help legitimize his program "As well as we've done, I've never had an athlete of the month' or athlete of the year'. And I've never been coach of the year, and in the last four years we've won everything there is to win in the NCWSA (Northwest College Womens Sports Association). "We re going to look better.” “I'm comfortable right now," Voelz said of Oregon's positon as a member of the NorPac. "If I found out it wasn't serving us to any level, I would push hard for an alternative And the only al ternative I see is Pac*10 But I Continued on Page 8B NORPAC Northern Pacific Athletic Conference slate of women's champion ships for the first time last year Oregon had been a member of the AIAW Region 9, which included teams from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Mon tana, but suddenly found itself out in the cold when the region "shattered" last year When the dust settled, a Mountain West conference was formed, which included mostly Division II schools such as Portland State and Montana Oregon and the other three Pac-10 Northwest schools decided that the Mountain West didn't offer the caliber of com petition they were looking for The next step was to look toward the Pac-10 "As the Pac-10 athletic direc tors got together, we couldn't get together,” said Voelz The main problem was that the southern Pac-10 schools saw a women s Pac-10 as offering less opportunity for their athletes than the current Southern Con ference Not surprisingly, the hangups were the added cost of traveling to the northern schools, and the prospect of having an unbalanced shcedule, such as the men have mation of the new league “We knew it would be a com petitive conference in basket ball and volleyball,” said Voelz, who has had to face three of the nation's top 20 teams in confer ence competition. The third na tional-level sport is track, where Oregon appears to be way out in front One of the major advantages of being in a conference is that the league champions automa tically qualify for the NCAA championships Oregon will host two of the conference championships this year: the basketball tournament and the track and field championships The top four teams based on a point system will qualify for the basketball and volleyball tour naments. The point system awards teams two points for league wins and one point for non-conference wins, and no points for a loss Oregon's women's basketball coach Elwin Heiny doesn't like the unbalanced schedule which forces the use of a point system, but he thinks it will work to his team's advantage this year, because Oregon will host four of the California teams and only
