Low Lows Make Future Brighter

Hard to imagine it could have been a better athletic weekend at Washington State University.

The football team won. The soccer team won.

The volleyball team won and won and won and won.

If only it had been the Huskies losing, a Cougar could have called it perfect.

Upward of 300 matches, meets and games remain for Wazzu’s varsity teams this school year, but it’s a great start - and, perhaps, at least a symbolic departure from 1996-97, which turned out to be the Cougars’ worst competitive showing across the board in the ‘90s.

That’s a harsh and subjective judgment, and by no means comprehensive. If you followed the volleyball team’s march to the NCAA final eight, if you were there when Isaac Fontaine became Cougar basketball’s all-time scoring leader, if you saw the stirring relays that allowed the track teams to sweep hated Oregon, then you witnessed unprecedented success.

Or maybe you’re more impressed by the swimming team’s 3.21 team GPA than you are by anyone’s time in the butterfly.

None of that escaped the attention of Rick Dickson. Nor did the setbacks.

“Last year was a difficult competitive year for us,” he admitted. “We had some high highs, but we had some low lows, too.”

In Dickson’s first 40 months as WSU’s athletic director, the highest high has probably been the pile on his desk. He’s had to deal with the residue of two Pac-10 investigations, retool the compliance and counseling departments, hire head coaches in a half-dozen sports and oversee the building of the Bohler Gym addition.

We’ve had occasion to discuss the surgery he’s performed on the football schedule, how the TV tail wags the college dog, the merits of playing in Seattle and Prop 48s - but never the State of the Cougs competitively.

This may not be the most opportune time.

The Cougs’ “batting average” - their finish in all Pac-10 sports, with 1.000 being the equivalent of a championship in each - was .286 last year, the lowest it’s been since 1990. By comparison, Stanford - the conference bully - was a puffed-up .690. In men’s sports, the Cougs have fallen off more than 150 points in just three years.

In the Sears Directors Cup standings - an all-sports ranking based on national finishes - WSU was 124th and last among Pac-10 schools, 39 spots behind Oregon State.

But arcane averages and rankings are only barometers. The lows, if anything, were lower.

Men’s basketball had its worst season since 1990. Women’s basketball finished in the second division for the sixth straight year.

The baseball team had easily the worst season in school history, losing games by two and three touchdowns in a sport measured by runs. Men’s track, despite four individual champions, had its first second-division Pac-10 finish since 1972. The men’s golf team, 10th in the Pac-10 tournament, finished as far out of ninth place as the ninth-place team finished out of first. The football team perfected its traditional November swoon.

And for the first time since 1961, the four major men’s teams - football, basketball, baseball and outdoor track - failed to win even once head-to-head against rival Washington.

Thank heavens for the volleyball team.

There are all sorts of factors, of course, that will keep the Cougs from ever having Stanford’s all-sports success. But at least in recent years, the Cougs were players.

“Hey, I remember my first year (1994-95), we had pretty phenomenal competitive success,” Dickson said. “But we had quite a bit of fallout from that, too. And I think we’re getting closer to having a more balanced result.”

Before he’ll decry won-lost records, Dickson must define winning for you. His best stab at it: balance.

Bowl games and tournament berths are great, but not if rules are fudged. GPAs mean as much to him as ERAs. By the same token, if the graduation rate is double the winning percentage, “then it’s not working, either.

“You get measured, but not only in wins and losses,” he maintained. “You can point to some success we’ve had, but at times there was a downside - our graduation rate was the lowest in the league. I don’t want to succeed like that. It’s got to be about balance. It’s the only approach I know.”

So while he suffered along with the baseball team through that miserable spring, he took comfort at the last Pac-10 meeting when league gumshoe David Price told the members that the Cougars’ compliance program had gone from “undoubtedly the worst to arguably the best. And that’s one of (President) Sam Smith’s priorities, because the letter gets addressed to him whenever something goes wrong, and I think he decided the last one was going to be the last one.”

Fine. But nobody stages pep rallies for the compliance department.

Alums were slapping one another on the back at the water cooler Tuesday because the Cougs won a terrific football game against UCLA on Saturday - not because the graduation rate has inched up.

And it will forever be so.

“But you have to set a tone, a foundation,” Dickson insisted. “And I think we have turned the tide and we’re making progress on creating the resources and tools that will lead to success on Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. We’ve positioned ourselves to succeed on the competitive front because this is the best group of kids I’ve ever been around.”

Dickson knows he can’t say that without it sounding like a slap at the athletes who came before - many of them who were able to win games and graduate. The most unfortunate tendency in the athletic department these days has little to do with losing and more to do with devaluing, however subtly, the triumphs of the past.

“There were good kids when I came,” Dickson said. “But there was a big disparity from top to bottom. There’s been a concerted effort to narrow that gap. I’m convinced that, on the whole, we have a better profile kid and good people in place to lead and develop them.”

Which doesn’t mean that a Coug will never again turn up on the police blotter, either. Again, the buzzword is balance.

If there was a poster child for Wazzu’s competitive slippage last year, it was Steve Farrington’s baseball team, which went 13-42. The visitors may still be hitting in their half of the ninth at Bailey Field.

“Some changes have been made and there’s got to be more,” Dickson said. “Some of it was our fault - overscheduling when the talent-level was shrinking, either because recruiting wasn’t at the level we need or because of lack of scholarships previously. We didn’t cut ourselves any breaks, let’s put it that way. But now we’ve added three series with the Pac-10 South this year, so it’s not going to get a lot easier.”

Likewise, Dickson couldn’t help but hear the grumbling about Kevin Eastman’s basketball team, a loser for the first time in seven years. The recent loss of sophomore Beau Archibald and transfer Ron Selleaze for personal reasons have again raised the issue of Eastman’s ability to attract and retain talent.

“I really think Kevin had brought the talent level back up,” Dickson said in what seems like a generous assessment. “And I still feel good about the foundation. Frankly, Kevin has sacrificed some wins over the last couple years to enhance and improve the balance of the program. Not everybody would do that, and you open yourself up for criticism.”

WSU athletics has, indeed, been enhanced - not only with higher GPAs and a more dogged approach to compliance, but with the Bohler addition and a budget that’s up $5.5 million in just three years.

“But competitiveness is a part of it,” Dickson said. “If we don’t do well, that’s a deficiency. We’re in a competitive industry. It’s just measured that way.

“If, at some point, we don’t show consistent improvement, then something’s wrong with the foundation. But I’m convinced the very opposite is true.”

We’ll find out. One weekend at a time.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. In a down cycle WSU’s athletic “batting average” - based on yearly finishes in Pac-10 sports (an average of 1.000 would mean winning the championship in each sport): Year Men Women Comb. 1989-90 .281 .262 .271 1990-91 .349 .242 .295 1991-92 .391 .234 .313 1992-93 .375 .234 .294 1993-94 .438 .219 .321 1994-95 .410 .240 .316 1995-96 .275 .303 .291 1996-97 .281 .289 .286 As a point of reference, Stanford led the Pac-10 in men’s (.627), women’s (.739) and combined (.690) averages for 1996-97.

2. No place to go but up All-sports standings in the Sears Directors Cup compiled by the National Association of College Directors of Athletics, based on top 64 finishes in NCAA sports: Top 5 1 Stanford 1084.5 points 2 North Carolina 804.0 3 UCLA 802.0 4 Nebraska 780.5 5 Florida 763.0 Others Pac-10 schools 6 Arizona 672.5 8 USC 628.0 11 Washington 610.5 13 Arizona State 571.0 25 Cal 503.5 55 Oregon 278.5 85 Oregon State 161.0 124 Washington State 107.5

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review