MISSION COLLEGE COULD LOSE ITS ATHLETIC PROGRAM.Byline: Bill Schlotter Daily News Staff Writer The athletic program at Los Angeles Mission College Los Angeles Mission College is a two-year community college located in Sylmar, California neighborhood of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, United States. It is part of the Los Angeles Community College District. will be scrapped this coming academic year if recommendations made by a budget committee at the financially strapped junior college on Wednesday are followed. In addition to eliminating funds for about one-quarter of the Sylmar school's classes, the committee also recommends eliminating the athletic budget and money for a citizenship program offered to immigrants. ``Right now, we're wiped out,'' said athletic director Athletic director (commonly, "athletics director") is a position at many American colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, which oversees the work of the coaches and related staff involved in intercollegiate or interscholastic athletic John Klitsner, who would lose his title and all six sports offered at the campus. The Free Spirit had teams in baseball, men's golf, men's soccer and men's and women's cross country in 1996-97. The school was set to add women's softball softball, variant of baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Invented (1888) in Chicago as an indoor game, it was at various times called indoor baseball, mush ball, playground ball, kitten ball, and, because it was also played by women, ladies' this season. College president Dr. Bill Norlund said the financial crunch is the result of indebtedness from a $2 million budget overrun 1. overrun - A frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, especially in serial line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters and the machine takes last year and a district funding formula that underfunds the smaller of the nine Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. Community College campuses, like Mission. ``The smaller schools kind of get lost because it costs more per student to run a small college,'' Norlund said. Mission was allocated about $9 million for the 1997-98 academic year, Norlund said. The college spent $10 million last year, $2 million over its $8 million budget, and must make up $800,000 of the debt in the coming year. ``We're making some extraordinarily painful budget adjustments,'' Norlund said. Wednesday's budget committee recommendations came as a surprise to Klitsner and Free Spirit coaches and athletes. Klitsner said he was led to believe at a budget meeting on Monday that athletics would be cut to the bone but saved. After trimming his budget proposal from $180,000 for the 1997-98 school year to just $35,000 for the fall quarter only, Klitsner said he understood the committee had voted to keep athletics. ``We left Monday's meeting thinking we were alive,'' he said. Klitsner said he found out Wednesday that the committee had reversed its decision. Norlund said the decision is not final and that he hopes the district will come to the rescue when it realizes the dire straits Noun 1. dire straits - a state of extreme distress desperate straits straits, strait, pass - a bad or difficult situation or state of affairs its Mission campus is in. ``I've got to be realistic,'' Norlund said. ``But I'm not giving up yet.'' Nonetheless, Norlund said he must make a final decision Monday so the college can prepare for the coming year. If he must cut the program, Norlund said he will begin work immediately to reinstate To restore to a condition that has terminated or been lost; to reestablish. To reinstate a case, for example, means to restore it to the same position it had before dismissal. it as soon as possible. Mission College has offered a limited but growing athletic program since it opened its doors 22 years ago. Baseball has been the school's most visible program, competing in the talent-rich Western State Conference. The school was to add softball this coming season and had recently hired former Pierce College In 2006 the Library won a national Excellence award. Academics Pierce College offers associate's degrees, mainly in the arts and sciences. There are also certificate programs in early childhood education, social services, dental hygienist, and others. softball coach Dan Berry to lead the team. Men's soccer was perhaps the most successful sport. The team finished third in the WSC WSC Winter Symposium on Chemometrics WSC Winter Simulation Conference WSC Wayne State College WSC Westfield State College (Westfield, MA) WSC Western State College (Colorado) last season. Soccer coach Adolfo Perez said abandoning the sport would be devastating dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. to his players, both athletically and academically. ``I hate to say it, but I would say about 80 percent of them will not go to school,'' Perez said. ``This was the thing that kept them in school.'' Perez said one of his players, forward Luis Mesta, gave up a chance to play professionally in Mexico in order to return for his second year of college. ``I don't feel bad for myself,'' said Perez, who will lose his coaching position and part-time teaching duties if athletics are cut. ``I feel bad for them.'' Cutting baseball at Mission would be bitterly ironic to one hopeful Free Spirit player. Former Kennedy High School star Derek Morse was transferring to Mission from Cal State Northridge, which just dropped its baseball program. |
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