BEATING THE ODDS : A Lean Budget and Small-Town ‘Stigma’ Have Not Kept Dan Guerrero From Success at Dominguez Hills

Until this year, Cal State Dominguez Hills Athletic Director Dan Guerrero worked in a cramped office, converting a shower and toilet area for storage space that he shared with two others.

The Division II school’s athletic budget is about half that of some schools in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. Attendance at most events for the school’s eight sports teams--the minimum required by the NCAA--is dismal.

It is Guerrero’s job to preside over this lean program that yields few champions, little glory and long odds, but his accomplishments in the past three years have not gone unnoticed.

According to aides, hardly a week goes by when Guerrero, 41, doesn’t receive an inquiry about another job. Last spring, the Long Beach resident finished as runner-up for the job of athletic director at UC Irvine, a position sought by more than 100 applicants. Former University of Houston athletic director Tom Ford got the job.

The ongoing interest in the up-and-coming Guerrero doesn’t surprise his boss, Lewis Murdock.

“Other schools are looking for . . . strong administrative skills,” said Murdock, vice president of student affairs. “Presidents want someone they can trust, someone they can turn the program over to and not worry about it winding up on the front page of a newspaper because of improprieties. Dan is a new breed. People like him will be in high demand.”

Although Dominguez Hills has yet to become the Division II athletic “power of the ‘90s” that Guerrero set out to create, the athletic director believes he is making progress.

He helped generate about $200,000 for the athletic program through a fund-raising drive and waged a successful campaign to persuade students to set aside a portion of their fees for sports, which provides another $120,000 a year. He hopes to use additional funds to increase the number of sports and scholarships.

The school has teams in men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s basketball, golf, baseball, softball and women’s volleyball. It has the equivalent of 15 full scholarships, although most are split among athletes.

“We are committed to forging ahead, not moving backward,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero wants to increase the number of scholarships by 5% a year.

“That’s necessary if we want to enhance the production of our teams,” Guerrero said. “That has been something that we have decided we are going to do, no matter what.”

In men’s basketball alone, the budget has almost doubled since Guerrero was promoted in 1988, after five years as associate athletic director. Before Guerrero’s promotion, basketball Coach Dave Yanai had a budget of $24,000, including a $12,000 scholarship allotment that was divided among 12 players. The current budget is about $50,000.

However, the school’s total athletic budget of $480,000 is still below others in the conference. Cal State Bakersfield, which offers 12 programs and competes in the CCAA with Dominguez Hills, has a budget of $850,000.

State schools are free to spend funding any way they like. In the past, the Dominguez Hills athletic department was not a high-priority budget item. Guerrero appears to have made a change in the university’s thinking, yet Dominguez Hills may never catch up to many of its rivals.

The university, a commuter campus which opened in 1965, has 12,000 students. Its 346-acre campus was carved on a sleepy knoll of tumbleweeds and wild mustard on what was once the historic Rancho San Pedro, the oldest Spanish land grant in the area. In the 1950s, the land was used by fishermen to dry their catches. Today, the 4,200-seat Toro Gymnasium overlooks spiraling smokestacks of Wilmington oil refineries. South Bay locals call the school “Cal State Carson.”

Guerrero said he has worked hard to dispel what he calls “that stigma” of Dominguez Hills as a backward little school in Carson.

The athletic director is credited with improving academic standards, and the school is starting to attract athletes from a larger area.

“There was a time when very few athletes were recruited outside a 20-mile radius of the campus,” Guerrero said. “Today we are getting players from Orange County and San Bernardino and the San Fernando Valley.”

Two athletes have been awarded Woody Hayes Scholar Athlete awards and three were Rhodes Scholar candidates. Murdock compares the athletic director’s approach to “the traditional Stanford or Yale model.”

“Our athletes . . . don’t hang out just as the baseball team or basketball team, they hang out as academic students,” he said.

So far, the results on the field have been modest.

The men’s soccer team shared a conference title during Guerrero’s first year. The women’s soccer team, which plays an independent schedule, advanced to the NCAA Division II Final Four tournament two years ago, and the men’s basketball team played in the Western Regional in 1989. The baseball team was ranked as high as fifth nationally this season, but finished fourth in the conference.

Still, Guerrero insisted: “We are right on track with where I want to be. We have achieved national rankings in several sports, and by virtue of that alone it puts us in the national spotlight.”

Guerrero was a highly recognized baseball player at Banning High and UCLA, where he played second base and batted .320, but soon was headed for a career in business. He joined Harbor Development Corp., a capital improvement company, in 1978 and became executive director two years later.

Then, in 1982, after earning a master’s degree in public administration at Dominguez Hills, he was invited to teach a class in that area. A year later, athletic director Susan Carberry surprised Guerrero by asking him to be an associate athletic director. He accepted, although he took a substantial pay cut and had to teach classes on the side to get by.

When Carberry resigned in 1988, Guerrero was named to succeed her.

Guerrero also has become a key figure in the NCAA. He is the only athletic director serving on the organization’s Division II Baseball Committee, and recently was appointed chairman of the influential NCAA committee that makes appointments to other organization committees.

But he balks at any suggestion that his days at Dominguez Hills are numbered.

“I’m not the kind of a person to just jump into a situation just to get into it,” he said. “I pride myself on the ability to evaluate any situation and come up with a solution that benefits all.”