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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 8, 1987)
u it Friday, May 8, 1987/The Battalion/Page 9 Sports stros’ Thon to rejoin club ■ ; in Montreal Ac will' andfuncMOUSTON (AP) — Houston As- i«ytO"tM shortstop Dic kie Thon will re- ■ingsuchioir the team in Montreal today, but > r e the tohe I las not yet been put on the active that then roster, the club announced. II neversi^B’hon, who left spring training Ifij Hip complaining of vision prob- refornt ;lefts, has been playing with the As- ■gative aditros’AAA team in Tucson, Ariz. Party aulHtstros spokesman Chuck Pool "s coveiasajd Thursday that although Thon titrolled 'will join the team Friday, he is not fCorp, sure when he actually vvill play with i, the Qithe Astros. s the broiHfhon has had recurring vision he Proyraproblems since a beaning incident in perceived!ly5. Earlier this year, he left spring black: trBning, returned, then went on to pHy with the minor league. ywon52jH“Ie has said he wants to return to etheC : the Astros after his vision problems it her ! improve. Nationim percent ' Johann Hive Deti ill dental’' rce racial I reinstall ted the: Lady Aggies to sponsor sports camps Hl'he Texas A&M Women’s Ath- lelc Department announced Thurs- e da\ that applications are now being aciepted for the annual Lady Aggie summer camps. ■Training sessions in basketball, e soltball and volleyball will be held on the A&M campus and will be con ducted by A&M Head Basketball Ci.tch Lynn Hickey and assistant ccpches Eileen Feeney and Shelly ■ighes-Feeney. ■Ball camps are scheduled for June 7-|l2, June 1J-I9 and July 5-10. ■ftbail camps will be held June 28- Jttlv 2, July 26-30 and August 2-6. ■ The first volleyball camp, which vvill focus on individual devel opment, is slated for July 26-30. The g.\ second camp, to be held August 2-6, iimiiiiir wjll concentrate on team play, lumbersoH^ 01 ations or additional in- uan j ous formation, call 845-1052 or write the , x ‘ [ramot Women’s Athletic Department at G. Rpllie While Coliseum, College Sta- |, 1( tidn, Texas 77813. mainoinH ’ < fhursd that mu i $2.8 hi! UT, Tech tied together by McWilliams 'Horns perennial kingpins in conference sports By Doug Hall Assistant Sports Editor Fourth in a five-part series Sport for sport, the University of Texas’ Athletic Department is not only one of the best in the Southwest Conference, but one of the best in the country. Such a statement might make Aggies’ eyes burn, but numbers are numbers. The football program, despite weathering several recent unsuc cessful seasons and the firing of Head Coach Fred Akers, has a re cord that no other school in the SWC can match. Since 1920, the Longhorns have won or tied for 22 SWC championships, the most recent being in 1983. Since 1941, they have finished in the AP Top- 10 19 times, including three na tional championships —1963, 1969 and 1970. Currently, there are over 50 former football players in the NFL including Jerry Gray, Ray mond Glayborn, Kenneth Sims, Doug Dawson and Glenn Black wood. Earl Campbell, the 1977 Heisman Trophy winner and for- program in fine mer Houston Oiler and New Or leans Saint, recently retired from pro football. But while Longhorn football may have stumbled over the past several years, Head Baseball Coach Cliff Gustafson has kept that Texas shape. After taking two of three games from Arkansas last week end, Texas clinched its ninth con secutive SWC championship, ip 93 seasons of baseball, Texas has won 60 SWC titles. Texas A&M is a distant second with 12 titles in 85 seasons. 1 he Longhorns are not strang ers to the winner’s circle in the swimming pool or on the track ei ther. Before this year, Texas men’s swimming team had fin ished in the NCAA’s top three for seven of the last eight years. The women, not to be outdone, have won the NCAA’s for the last four years and the SWC since 1982. On the track in 1986, the Longhorns were the first school in live years to wrest the outdoors title away from Arkansas, the pre mier track school in the confer ence. Had enough? Sorry, because there’s more. UT’s women’s basketball team, ranked No. 1 in the nation for most of the season, lost to Loui siana Tech in the semi-final round of the women’s final four, despite playing in front of it’s home crowd at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center in Austin. Because there is not a poll after the championship, Texas still fin ished No. 1 in the nation. In volleyball, the Longhorns once again waxed the SWC for the fifth time in five years. Over that span, the Longhorns have had three perfect SWC seasons and lost only two matches. In the NCAA’s, Texas was defeated by the University of the Pacific and finished eight h nationally. Okay, there is one sport where Texas lags behind the rest of the conference: men’s basketball. Despite tying for first place with A&M and TCU in 1986, the Longhorns have had little success under fifth-year coach Bob Welt- lich, who replaced Abe Lemmons in 1983. In fact, 1986 was the first year a Weltlich team had finished over the .500 mark. This year the Longhorns won 14 games while losing 17. When it comes to money, how ever, the Longhorns rank second to none in the conference (according to the records made public to us). Doug Messer, Texas’ assistant athletic diretor for financial affairs, said the Longhorn’s proposed budget for 1987-88 is $8.9 million for the men and $2.7 million for the Red Raiders enjoy excellent recruiting position By Doug Hall Assistant Sports Editor It’s only fitting, after last fall’s controversial coaching change be tween Texas Tech and Texas, that the two schools’ athletic pro grams should be analyzed in the same issue. Alter leading the Red Raiders to their first winning season since 1978, Head Coach David McWil liams left Tech after only one sea son to take the head-coaching po- sition at Texas. McWilliams graduated from Texas in 1963 and coached there for 16 seasons. Some might say that the Texas T ech football program, now run by former defensive coordinator Spike Dykes — its sixth head coach in the past 13 years— got the short end of the deal. Regardless, Tech’s 7-5 record in 1986 puts the Red Raiders in the best recruiting position they’ve been in since they went 7-4 in 1978. And according to T Jones, Tech’s athletic director, winning is important for recruiting when you’re located deep in the heart of West Texas. Jones said, “There’s a direct correlation with winning as to whether recruits want to visit your school.” Jones cited Texas A&M’s successful recruiting over the past several years as a good example. “You certainly have to make an effort to get here,” he said. “But we feel once a student comes here and sees what we have, then we’ve got a very fair opportunity to re cruit him.” Texas Tech Sports Informa tion Director Joe Hornaday said that being located in Lubbock also has its advantages. Hornaday said, “We recruit on the school, not where we axe lo cated. We’re far away from every thing, but there is a positive side to that iri, ‘Hey, let’s get away fi om everything to go to school.’ “The key is to get them to vis it.” Over the past several years, the Tech men’s basketball team is one that easily draws in top recruits. After winning the Southwest Conference title and the SWC post-season tournament in 1985, the Red Raiders went on to the NCAA tournament before losing to the Big East’s Boston College in the first round. In 1986, Tech started off slowly in the conference and fin ished with a 9-6 recoxd. In the conference tournament, how ever, they heat Southern Method ist, Texas Christian and Texas A&M to win the title for the sec ond consecutive year before suc cumbing to Georgetown, another Big East power, in the NCAA’s. This year. Tech was 15-14 de spite the play of one the SWC’s top young players in sophomore Sean Gay. Although West Texas tradi tionally has some of the finest high school baseball programs in the state, Texas Tech has not been able to put its program on the winning side in quite some time. Along with Rice, Tech is one of only two schools in the confer ence to have a losing record in baseball over the last 37 seasons. Tech has never won a SWC championship and last chal lenged for the title in 1971 when they finished thiid with an 11-7 record. This year was no different as the Red Raiders were 6-15 in con ference and 21-28 on the season. Other sports in Tech’s athletic department are si m i I a il y grounded in mediocrity. The men’s golf team last won the SWC title in 1971, but has since foundered near the bottom of the standings. The women’s golf team has finished last in the confeience from 1983-1985, and the men’s tennis team has never won the SWC title. Next Wednesday: Texas A&M berg, F I. has dii loing a: gihem ?tic toils! ue iiione le unenu erve two: i. safety am e have io id the oik lent andi istraints.' I BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL? Qtudy Special n I Domino's Pizza has a special for you! Anytime, day or night, from May 1st thru May 15th you can get a 12'' one-item pizza for only $4.95. 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