Point Guard Cooper Signs With CSUN Women

Chelsea Cooper of Eisenhower High in Rialto signed a letter of intent to play women’s basketball at Cal State Northridge.

Cooper, a 5-foot-4 point guard who averaged 12.5 points and four assists as a senior at Eisenhower, is the first recruit signed by Northridge Coach Michael Abraham, who was hired in May to succeed Kim Chandler.

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El Camino Real High forward Jermel Jones, who led the Conquistadores in scoring last season, plans to transfer to Fremont.

Jones, who averaged 19 points a game as a junior, played with Fremont in the recent L.A. Watts Summer games, helping the Pathfinders to the tournament final.

Track and Field

Billy Bush of Downey High in Modesto and Zarinah Tillman of Foothill in Pleasanton head a list of five athletes to have signed letters of intent with Cal State Northridge.

Bush was the Sac-Joaquin Section champion in the boys’ shotput and discus. He has personal bests of 61 feet 1 1/4 inches in the shot and 179-4 in the discus, but struggled in the State championships earlier this month. He placed sixth in the discus and failed to qualify for the finals of the shotput,

Tillman finished seventh in the 400 and eighth in the 200 in the State meet. She has personal bests of 55.57 in the 400 and 24.93 in the 200.

Mike Balderas of Garden Grove High, Micki Rogers of Apple Valley and Monica Tobin of San Francisco Mercy are the other signees.

Balderas has run 1 minute 56.1 seconds in the 800 and 4:27.3 in the 1,600 and placed third and ninth in those events in the Southern Section Division III finals.

Rogers finished fourth in the 100 high hurdles and eighth in the 300 lows in the Southern Section Division I championships. She has bests of 14.64 in the highs and 45.88 in the lows.

Tobin has totaled “around 3,800 points” in the heptathlon, according to Northridge assistant Pam Spencer-Marquez.

Art Green, who guided the Thousand Oaks High girls’ team to 14 Marmonte League titles between 1978 and 1994, has been hired as an assistant coach at Moorpark College after a one-year coaching hiatus.

Green, whose older brother Doni also coaches at Moorpark, will work with the men’s and women’s hurdlers and the women’s heptathletes and relay teams.

Under Green’s guidance, Thousand Oaks compiled a 101-4 record in Marmonte League competition and won the 1992 Southern Section 3-A Division title. The Lancers also finished second in the 3-A Division in 1991 and at the 4-A level in 1978, ’80 and ’87.

Art Venegas of UCLA, regarded as one of the top weight-event coaches in the country, will hold a shotput and discus clinic at Glendale College today and Saturday.

The clinic is designed for men and women throwers and coaches of all levels with sessions lasting from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

Information: 818-240-1000, ext. 5373.

Tennis

Nick Varvais of Simi Valley and Dylan Mann of Canoga Park, in boys’ 18-and-under singles, and Erin Boisclair of Agoura Hills and Julia Feldman of Encino, in girls’ 18 singles, have received automatic berths in the United States Tennis Assn.’s national clay court championships starting July 16.

Kirsten Gross of Calabasas and Shera Wiegler of Bell Canyon are first alternates in girls’ 18 singles. Others receiving automatic berths are Nicholas Weiss of Woodland Hills and Travis Rettenmaier of Camarillo in boys’ 14 singles and Darian Chappell of Camarillo in girls’ 16 singles.

The clay court championship is one of four national age-group tournaments in junior tennis.

Ania Bleszynski of Thousand Oaks has received the Evelyn Houseman Junior Sportsmanship Award, which annually honors one male and one female player who most exemplify the spirit of the sport on and off the court in Southern California junior tennis.

Bleszynski captured the 1994 Southern California Junior Sectional championship in girls’ 18 singles. In 1995, she reached the round of 16 in singles and the quarterfinals in doubles in the NCAA championships as a freshman at Stanford.

Mike Bryan of Camarillo, a member of the U.S. junior national team, reached the quarterfinals of the Ditson on Thames international junior tournament in London before losing.

Bryan lost to second-seeded Mariano Puerta of Argentina, 6-4, 6-4. Puerta is ranked No. 2 in the world by the International Tennis Federation.

Twin brother Bob Bryan reached the round of 16.

Football

Two junior college players have committed to Cal State Northridge for next season.

Chad Marsalek, a fullback from Santa Barbara City College, has signed a letter of intent with the Matadors. He rushed for 980 yards and was an All-Western State Conference North Division selection.

The Matadors also received a verbal commitment from Seepoleta Imo, a 6-foot, 245-pound defensive lineman from San Diego Mesa.

Coach Dave Baldwin also announced that Leroy Irvin has been hired as the defensive backs coach and former CSUN running back Mike Kane’s hiring was approved by the school administration.

“I’m real happy with the hiring of these coaches,” Baldwin said. “Having Kane here is like bringing back family, and you can’t take away Leroy’s NFL experience.”

Irvin, a former defensive back with the Los Angeles Rams, is the only coach to have been retained from last season’s staff.

Volleyball

Cal State Northridge’s Jon Baer signed a two-year contract with Donaukraft, a professional volleyball club in Vienna.

Baer, a 6-foot-6 outside hitter, averaged 5.6 kills a game for Northridge last season and will report to the Austrian team for training in July.

Baseball

Carlos Olea, an All-American second baseman from Cerritos College, has signed a letter of intent with Cal State Northridge.

Olea batted .365 and drove in 50 runs for the Falcons, who lost to Rancho Santiago in the State final.

Nevada Las Vegas third baseman Ryan Hankins, a Simi Valley High graduate, and Pepperdine left-hander Randy Wolf, an El Camino Real graduate, have been selected to Baseball America magazine’s freshman All-America team.

Cal State Northridge outfielder Adam Kennedy made the second team.

Miscellany

The Red Army, a Thousand Oaks-based youth roller hockey team, will play La Mesa (San Diego) for the Koho California Cup championship Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Pond of Anaheim.

Information: 714-939-7663.

* Contributing: Jeff Fletcher, Dana Haddad, Michael Lazarus, Paige A. Leech, John Ortega, Bryan Rodgers.