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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 1982)
The Battalion Sports s September 2, 1982/Page 17 loch, com )th are onHv-, ’romotioci is a ‘m (the s of the start bur Athletic Department: decision not misleading which hai 50,000, r c puter arker a he Demotion puzzling to soccer teams by John P. Lopez lKg;S , Battalion Staff The coaches and several 1,11 l<inil) 'ieml)ers of the now-defunct s'etsabo. tggK- varsity soccer teams are and infused, surprised and upset zes P er '' sto why the Texas A&M Athle te Council decided to abolish ' ' l! lsct) heir varsity status and cut off all have no un( ii n g from the Athletic De- ie. why , ar tment. Lin $ wa ^ This move, announced Mon- °st s Win|ifcy, precedes the scheduled ‘year am-tart of the season by only one base, . ve ek. 1 also (nBre Athletic Department, on week frhe other hand, said the decision vas not made hastily. They said )f gamejxjth the men’s and women’s soc- i-readen :er teams knew last spring that heir varsity status would not The San un through this fall, rd acontepgo who’s right? tie—alii»On Oct. 7, the men’s and rlters in women’s soccer squads were i a $2..v|jpcially elevated to varsity sta- 500 born us on a trial basis. Since then, ubscribehe teams and the Athletic De- Vngeles ikrtnient have disagreed on the imes niti eagth of the promotion. , but ost predc In an article published Tues day in the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Texas A&M Associate Athletic Director Charles J. Thornton was quoted as saying that he told men’s coach Telmo Franco three times that the soc cer program would be dropped this fall. Franco said Tuesday that Thornton’s statement was not true. “Everything that Charley Thornton said in the Eagle is a flat lie,” Franco said. “I was nev er notified that our team was not going to be on the varsity level. He (Thornton) should have sent me a memo or something. That’s the way any organization should be run. I found out about us not being on the varsity level through one of his secretaries.” Thornton said he made it clear to Franco the program would be abolished. “Coach Franco knew about us cutting soccer out since last spring,” he said. “I met with Dr. (George) Kattawar (faculty sponsor of men’s soccer) and Coach Franco two or three times last spring and told them it was 99.9 percent sure we would not have varsity soccer this year. “We made our decision after conducting an extensive survey on several other soccer prog rams in the state and found out that there were only two schools in the Southwest Conference that had a varsity team and none of the other schools were think ing about having one. The whole thing was just botched. It was bad communication. Coach Franco has said that he can’t reach me but I’ve been here.” Athletic Council Chairman Tom Adair agreed with Thorn ton, saying he too knows that Franco was notified last spring of the demotion. Franco said such a decision never was made at the meetings between him and Thornton. “I never knew that we weren’t going to be a varsity team,” he said. “I heard rumors but I nev er knew. I spent all summer pre paring for this year and now it seems that I just wasted my time.” Kattawar, whom Thornton mentioned, said he was under the impression the soccer team would perform on the varsity level one way or another. The Eagle article quoted Kat tawar as saying that after a spring meeting with Thornton, he left “pretty sure (soccer) was dropped.” Wednesday, Kattawar said: “That didn’t come out quite the way I said it. What it boiled down to was that we really didn’t need any funding. Thornton told me that we probably would not be in the department but there was the possibility of forming a varsi ty-club level in which the team would perform on the varsity level but would not be funded by the department. He said he was going to form a committee to look into that possibility.” Jim Butts, the women’s soccer coach, said he knew the varsity status was temporary but “we hoped to prove ourselves and have the recognition extended.” Butts said: “I thought we proved ourselves. I mean, we ended up eighth in the nation last year.” The women’s team, Butts said, has reapplied for varsity recognition since its varsity sta tus was abolished. Butts said he discussed the soccer team’s di lemma with Athletic Director Jackie Sherrill. “I went up to see him and he explained the Athletic Depart ment’s situation and I explained mine,” Butts said. “I left the meeting thinking that Mr. Sher rill is a very fair man and that if the decision was up to him, I believe that it would be in the best interest of the soccer team and the university.” But the decision already has been made. Naturally, the peo ple who stand to lose the most are the players. Butts and Fran co have attracted some of the best soccer players in the coun try and if those players decide to transfer to another university, they could stand to lose a year of eligibility. One player who already de cided to transfer next year is all- SWC halfback Carlos Gutierrez. “I think I’m going to transfer to either Stanford or Princeton,” he said. “I’d like to stay here be cause I like the engineering school, but I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t play soccer. I’ve played all my life.” Also, there’s a strong possibil ity the men will not play any matches this year. Franco said: “The decision really ruined the (soccer) careers of some of our players. If they transfer now, they probably will not be able to play on the varsity level for one year because of NCAA rules. And most of the teams on our schedule this year probably will not play us because they don’t want to play a team that isn’t varsity. “Our team this year would See SOCCER page 18 Charles J. Thornton Aggie football has endured its ups and downs is spoken said a bout 35/ ( 12-wed by Ritchie Priddy uch tapen' an d Todd Woodard »f the pen Battalion Reporter prize is We were sitting in the north and pmend of Kyle Field at Texas A&M it is a trifiyOctober 1979, confident that o Tnbtrhe Aggies could hold a 14-10 g "Zingo ?ad against the Houston The ne« Sugars. t moreWith the clock four seconds eroff sahy of a minute. Cougar quar- ousands erback Terry Elston threw an I’ve-closed-my-eyes-hope-you- :atch-this” pass toward the right --imiine, a pass that flanker Eric kpU’ 1 'herring p U n ec l f r0 m between DO winnc wo Aggie defenders. 4 A few seconds later, Elston, leaistogi l pp arent jy running with eyes 1 buy tk v i| e open, crossed the Aggie iff said roal, shocking more than 59,000 the Pbiewers into silence, all aoouir Xhe fma | score was 17-14. producDDejected, we ambled down the itadium steps behind a man in !. A''" lis mid-30s with a boy, about 5, contests n tow. Each wore maroon pants, i awareol 0 pp ec i by a white knit sports hirt. The boy’s shirt read, “An considt \gi:i e ’ s Son.” »fluen«®rhe father lifted his son, per- keoftelt;hed him on his shoulder, and the lo%ked the boy if he had enjoyed to comf;hfe game. :contei)l| “I had fun, Daddy,” the boy i using* teep read 1’t alwaf said. “But why didn’t the Aggies win?” The father didn’t have a ready answer. He stammered, shuffling his feet in the exit line: “Well, son, I don’t know. But “I don’t think we’ve been unsuccessful, but we have not attained, particularly in football, the level that the major ity of former students believe we should have attained.” — H.R. “Bum” Bright, chair man of the Texas A&M System Board of Re gents. we’ll get ’em next time.” Getting them next time has been a familiar refrain of Texas A&M supporters for years. Since the school rolled out its First team in 1894, Texas A&M has a winning percentage of .551, with 448 wins in 814 games. The school has one na tional championship (1939), 11 Southwest Conference cham pionships and 13 bowl games (8- 5 in bowls). But part of that win ning record is skewed toward the formative years of Texas A&M, when it took big wins over the Deaf & Dumb Institute in 1904 (49-0), Transylvania in 1910 (33-0) and the Houston YMCA in 1905 (29-0). In those early years, Texas A&M’s strong connection with the Reserve Officer Training Corps was an advantage — heal thy, strong, well-trained bodies could take tactical advantage of opponents. The Dniversity was a football fortress for ROTC trainees, properly called cadets. However, during the last 20 years, Texas A&M has fared much more poorly. While the University of Texas’ record was swelling like an overworked, blood-filled bicep, Texas A&M’s record was comparatively meager. The win- loss record from 1960 to 1981 runs 106-119 with three ties, under coaches whose records many Aggies would like to forget: Jim Myers, H.C. “Hank” Foldberg and Gene Stallings. In fact, it wasn’t until Emory Bellard established his ball con trol offense and debilitating de fense in the middle 1970s that the maroon bumper stickers appeared, proclaiming: “Aggie football — The joking’s over.” Remember that the second- largest land grant university in Texas has been the SWC cham pion in the Cotton Bowl once in the last 40 years, only three times in the 46-year history of the bowl. Texas A&M would have represented the SWC in 1958, but Paul “Bear” Bryant’s 9-0-1 team was on probation. Since 1958, Texas has picked cotton 12 times, Arkansas 4, Houston 3, Baylor 2, SMU 1 (plus one probation that kept the Mustangs out of a bowl), and A&M 1. One of the coaches who con tributed to Texas A&M’s sub standard record was Foldberg, who now works in real estate in Arkansas. His teams from 1962- 64 compiled a 6-23 record. Foldberg was one of five coaches the Aggies have had since 1958. Myers (1958-61, win-loss record of 12-24-4) and Stallings (1965-71, win-loss re cord of 27-45-1) now work for the Dallas Cowboys. Bellard took over after Stall ings left in 1971. After two re building years, Bellard gave Texas A&M its first winner since 1967; his 1974 team was 8-3. In 1975 and 1976, his teams went 10-2, but still no Cotton Bowl. In 1977, his record fell to 8-3, and the year after, he res igned with a 4-2 record. Tom Wilson took over in mid season 1977, capping an 8-4 sea son with a 28-12 win over Iowa State. Wilson spent a troubled three and a half years (going 21 - 19) before being replaced by Jackie Sherrill. Fortunately for the Aggies, the problems that caused their mediocre showings in the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s seem to have faded, along with Texas A&M’s all-male, all-military, all-white past. Multimillionaire business man H.R. “Bum” Bright, Texas A&M Class of’43 and now chair man of the Texas A&M System Board of Regents, said he be lieves poor planning caused many of the substandard show- ings. “We haven’t succeeded be cause we haven’t focused on it; we haven’t had measurable See HISTORY page 19 lip Those Blank hfalls jsith. ji osiers ft m iA' front ^ the Qiriosity Shop 10%Qff%$ t z i 1703 Texas Culpepper Plaza 10:00 - 6:00 Fri., Sat. Next Week only—10:00 - 8:00 Mon., Tue., Wed., Thurs. GRAND OPENING 404 East University Dr. College Station SAVE 20% OFF Every Item In Stock At Both Locations. Register Weekly At The College Station Store For 3 Gift Certificates To Be Given Away Each Week.