THE COLLEGES : UC Irvine Notebook : Pinckney Navigating on Course Toward Top

The course of Jon Pinckney’s athletic career was set when he was 3 years old and his parents moved to Balboa Island. He started sailing as soon as he was old enough to join the junior program at the yacht club across from his bay-front home, and he hasn’t changed tack since.

“My parents wanted my older brother and I to get involved in something on the water,” he said. “I started sailing Sabots (small, one-sail dinghies) when I was 7, and I’ve sailed just about every day I could since.”

Pinckney, the top skipper on UC Irvine’s sailing team, probably would have ended up at College of Charleston (S.C.) like his brother, Mike, or maybe at one of those Eastern schools where they take this sport seriously and actually have wind .

But his parents offered to send him to a New England prep school for his last two years of high school, and the experience taught him to appreciate California weather . . . and the California life style.

“The Brewster Academy, two hours north of Boston in New Hampshire,” Pinckney recalled. “Let’s just say I didn’t exactly fit in. It was cold, really cold. You didn’t go outside much. And it was super structured, study hours at night, appointments all the time, nothing to do outside the school.

“There were a lot of times you said to yourself, ‘This (is terrible).’ But I played on the basketball team, had a black roommate and met people from all over the world. I matured there. Of course I went there for the sailing, and I will say I came into college with all the tools and a lot of experience.”

Competing against the nation’s top high school sailors, Pinckney twice won the New England championship. In his sophomore year at Irvine, he led for the first two days of the national championships at Brown University before he fell to fourth on the third and final day. His brother was second.

“The whole regatta was sailed in at least 25-mile-per-hour winds,” he said. “The schools from the East bring their whole teams, up to 20 people, and we brought six. The winds were so strong that everyone was using their heaviest crews. They were averaging 340 pounds, and we were at 295.”

The difference in weight meant that the Irvine team had to work harder to keep its boat level. When fatigue set in on the third day, Irvine began to fade.

“At the beginning of the last day, Mike passed me in the standings,” Pinckney said. “We were just too tired. By the end of the day, I couldn’t walk up the stairs.”

Pinckney is used to finishing behind his brother, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“He was always better than me, and I hate losing,” Pinckney said. “Even in checkers . . . especially to my brother. I was so sick of being known as ‘Little Pinckney.’ ”

“Little Pinckney” became a big man in 1986, though, and was named an All-American. He redshirted last year and hopes to be the biggest man at this June’s national championships in San Francisco.

“Jon pretty much knows it all,” said Craig Wilson, Irvine’s sailing coach. “He’s self-motivated, and he’s self-trained.”

Connie McKivett, a junior at Irvine who often crews with Pinckney, says her ability as a skipper has improved drastically since they became a team.

“He’s really smart,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing all the time. He knows everything.”

Last year, Pinckney wasn’t competing and wasn’t passing too much of that knowledge to his teammates.

“When I came here in ‘85, Jon had already been here a year, and I made the mistake of approaching him like I would any athlete,” Wilson said. “But we practiced Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and he practiced on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“He fully understands tactics, so our practices weren’t that worthwhile for him. He worked alone, focusing his energy on technique. But he’s not so much of a loner now. He’s much more the team player this year.”

Pinckney admits that he failed to live up to his team responsibilities in the past, but now he’s trying to make up for it. Irvine was picked as the No. 20 team in the country coming into the year, but Pinckney hopes to be a major factor--both in and out of the water--in the Anteaters’ rise to a top-five finish.

“This should be our best year since I’ve been here (Irvine finished sixth in 1986),” he said. “We have as much talent as any team in the country, and we’re deep with four really capable skippers.”

The Guilt Trip continues.

A season-record 3,438 were in the Bren Center Saturday night as the Anteaters upset San Jose State, 98-77, but Coach Bill Mulligan still isn’t overjoyed with the students’ lack of support for the basketball program.

“They’re getting better, but in another week or two, they’ll all be in the library, worrying about tests,” Mulligan said at his weekly media luncheon Monday.

Mulligan, who often speaks to fraternities and sororities on campus, still can’t understand Irvine students.

“It’s their school, not mine,” he said. “I didn’t go here. Some day, someone will ask about their college basketball team, and they’ll say, ‘I never saw them. I was in the library.’

“To me, there’s things in life more important--not just basketball, but a lot of things--than getting all A’s. There are a lot of people who are successful in this world who were B and C students. . . . I’m probably looking at a lot of them right now.”

Anteater Notes

Trevor Kronemann and Mark Kaplan of Irvine will meet Scott Melville and Eric Amend of USC in the rescheduled doubles championship of the adidas Invitational tennis tournament Saturday at Lindborg Tennis Club in Fountain Valley. The final was rained out at the Grand Champions Resort in Indian Wells last weekend. . . . Coach Bill Mulligan, after watching the videotape of Irvine’s victory over San Jose State: “I wasn’t as happy after seeing the tape. Overall, we were defending a lot better, but (Wayne) Engelstad, (Kevin) Floyd and (Frank) Woods aren’t defending the way I want them to.” Don’t look for those three to spend much time on the bench, though. Their combined scoring average is 50 points a game. . . . Center Cheryl Eiland (torn tissue in the right foot) and guard Kippie Brown (sprained foot) will miss Saturday’s game against UC Santa Barbara at the Bren Center.