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
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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