As Going Gets Tough, Kopita Will Go Fishing

NORTHRIDGE — With a key decision-maker leaving today on a fishing trip, the future of Cal State Northridge’s athletic department will remain in question until early next week.

But one part of the picture became clearer with the announcement that no women’s sports are likely to be added.

“In all likelihood, the possibility of adding a new women’s sport for 1997-98 is quite remote,” Ron Kopita, Northridge vice president in charge of student affairs, said Tuesday.

Kopita said the budget is simply too tight to allow any additional costs, even for the relatively inexpensive women’s sports suggested by Athletic Director Paul Bubb--water polo, rifle and lacrosse.

That leaves eliminating men’s programs--and trimming the budgets of others--as the only options for Northridge to get within budgetary and gender-equity requirements.

The sports susceptible to being axed, because they are not played by the Big Sky Conference, are baseball, golf, soccer, swimming and volleyball. If golf is made a Big Sky core sport instead of tennis, Northridge would keep that sport and not create a tennis team, as planned for 1998-99.

A final announcement will not come before he returns from a five-day fishing trip to Minnesota next week, Kopita said.

“There will be nothing sent out publicly in writing, no conclusions drawn and no announcement made without my physical presence at Cal State Northridge,” Kopita said. “I am as much a part of this anyone. But I need my own well being.”

When asked if this was an inopportune time for a vacation, Kopita said: “I go on a fishing trip this week every year. This is a long-standing vacation that I have.”

The fishing trip didn’t sit well with one Northridge coach.

“It’s as if he doesn’t realize how many people his decision is affecting,” the coach said. “There are a lot of coaches and a lot of student-athletes that are holding their breath right now.”

Bubb said he didn’t think Kopita’s vacation delayed a decision beyond the original time frame--the middle of June.

“I don’t like the idea that we have a number of young men waiting for this decision, but I don’t think [Kopita] being gone for five days is going to have a significant impact on that,” Bubb said. “If you go back to when I met with the coaches [in late April], I said that in mid-June we would have a final decision.”

Kopita said the school is trying to make the decisions as quickly as possible, without acting hastily.

“I think it’s important that we take this whole issue very seriously,” he said. “We recognize that the students will be upset and their parents will be upset. We are trying to balance taking our time so we can think this through versus not wanting to injure students by dragging it out.”

The crisis within the athletic department was created because the Big Sky Conference mandated Northridge upgrade its football program by increasing from 20 scholarships in 1995 to 45 in 1997, and eventually 63. Besides over-extending the budget, the extra men’s scholarships threw Northridge off track to meet gender-equity requirements that take effect in 1998.