County Hall of Fame to Honor Salata

The Orange County Sports Hall of Fame will present its Lifetime Achievement Award to Newport Beach’s Paul Salata at its annual induction banquet April 30 at the Anaheim Marriott.

Salata, 71, who is a founding member of the hall of fame, is perhaps most renowned for creating Irrelevant Week, which has been honoring the last player picked in the NFL draft for the past 23 years.

He played wide receiver for USC in the 1940s and later for the Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers. He is presently owner and president of GAS Investments Company.

Also being honored with annual awards at the banquet:

* Bill Cunerty, 51, who is a former Saddleback College football coach, with the Woody Dietch Award for Courage. Cunerty led his Gaucho team to the national championship in 1996 after overcoming colon cancer and diabetes.

* Ken Purcell, a former all-around athlete at Orange High who played minor league baseball for the Boston Red Sox, with the Ralph Clark Citizenship Award. Purcell is national sales vice president for First American Title Insurance Company in Santa Ana.

* Duncan Clark, who was unofficial sports historian for the city of Orange for more than 50 years before he died March 12 from lung cancer, with the Good Guy Award.

* Jim Gattis, manager of the national champion South Mission Viejo Little League team, with the Jack Hutcherson Award for service to youth. Gattis led the team into the 1997 Little League World Series championship game, where it lost to Guadeloupe, Mexico, 5-4.

The evening will conclude with the induction of Bob Boone, Bob Boyd, Steve DeBerg, Debbie Green, Johnnie Johnson, Dan Quisenberry and Leon Wood--the Class of 1998--into the Hall of Fame. Tickets are $100 each and available by calling (714) 758-9882.

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The Cal State Fullerton women’s gymnastics team has missed qualifying for postseason regional competition for only the second time in the 23-year history of the program.

The Titans finished third in the Big West Conference meet Saturday at Boise State behind Utah State and the host team. Fullerton’s regional qualifying score of 188.225 wasn’t good enough to qualify for the NCAA West Regional at Seattle April 4, according to Titan Coach Lynn Rogers.

UC Davis earned the last of seven qualifying spots ahead of the Titans. “There was about seven-tenths of a point difference,” Rogers said.

One Titan, freshman Marianne Griffin, qualified individually in the all-around competition.