Coasters: The OCC challenge

Steve Virgen

The prestige of the respected athletics department of Orange Coast

College is being challenged.

Sounds too bold of a statement?

Ponder this: OCC is the only school out of the eight colleges in the

Orange Empire Conference without a sports information director.

OCC’s former S.I.D., Sam Felsenfeld, left for greener pastures, so to

speak, after accepting a job to create and maintain a website for a local

company. Now Orange Coast has two sports running, men’s and women’s

basketball, and the spring sports coming soon, and no one to manage

statistics, update the school’s athletic website or report signees and

transfer news.

When is OCC going to take care of the problem?

“I have no idea on what we’re going to do with replacement,” OCC

Athletic Director Fred Hokanson said. “If we are able to replace, we will

(put out an advertisement for hiring). We will try to cover the position

for now, with a couple of people in-house, is what I’ve heard. We need

that position. I hope we can go and get another person, but I don’t

know.”

Hokanson said that he must petition to the school’s planning and

budget committee so that an opening for an S.I.D. can be created again.

The absence of the S.I.D. has created, to put it nicely, bothersome

busy-work for the coaches. Fortunately, for OCC women’s basketball coach

Mike Thornton, he had Felsenfeld train one of his redshirts to manage the

statistics.

“We’ll be OK,” Thornton said. “It’s not a great situation. It’s us

(coaches) that have to pay. I don’t think the men’s basketball media

guide has been done. Fortunately, for us that was done. We had sold ads.

(Felsenfeld) got that done right before he left.

“(OCC has) always had a class program,” he continued. “We’ve been on

top of the conference. I hate to see this happen. It’s a negative thing

for all of us. We’ll be able to survive. Fortunately, I have somebody

that will take care of it.”

Pirates’ men’s basketball coach Steve Spencer hasn’t been so lucky. In

his first year, Spencer, rather than fully concentrate on building a

winner, he must also add stat-taking to his long list of duties. He

sometimes depends on the opponent’s stats to report results to the

newspapers.

Furthermore, the lack of, or inaccuracy of the statistics, might

negatively affect the coaches’ strategy of recruiting. The OCC athletics

website, which has not been updated in more than two months, is

definitely a recruiting tool. But that, too, is in danger. And without

media guides, the sports are failing to advertise themselves.

OCC baseball coach John Altobelli will do his best that his program

will not take a hit.

“I’ll have to do my own stats,” said Altobelli, whose team will be in

serious contention for an OEC title this spring. “I don’t know what we’re

going to do with the media guides. But I’ll use my pocket palm pilot to

keep track of stats as the game progresses. It’s an unfortunate

situation. The coaches just have to suck it up.”

So what went wrong at OCC? Felsenfeld left the school because he

wanted to earn more money and he has a strong desire to work in the

private sector, mainly with marketing or website advertisement.

His ability to do both for OCC, proved tiresome for Felsenfeld, a

27-year-old with a wife and a baby son.

“I really loved Orange Coast, but it was a dead end for me,” said

Felsenfeld, who used the OCC athletics website as a visual reference for

his new job. “It just didn’t work out for me. I had to work too many

hours for the job. For a guy with a wife and a young child that was just

too much. During the school year, I worked 70-80 hours a week.”

Altobelli has a suggestion for future instances of such a workload.

“(OCC) should separate the two, S.I.D. and website (maintenance),”

Altobelli said. “(Sam) created another job. Sam created a monster between

working the two. It’s unfortunate. He did an awesome job. He really did a

super job. People, recruits, have told me, ‘We looked on your web page,’

and had the nicest things to say. Sometimes, I think it was a little too

much because it was like a scouting report for other teams.”

OCC should listen to Altobelli’s suggestion or hire a new S.I.D. soon,

perhaps a part-timer to maintain the website or the stats. OCC sports and

the prestige of the program could take a hit. Winning definitely brings

success, but who will know about the wins if no one is there to spread

the news.