St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 41

3 UN 17 1990 ST. LOUIS PT-mspATCH ouiwr, jUNfc 1, 1990 ocke's Appointment Expected To Prod Along Equality By Elliott Almond (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times Bernadette Locke was named an assistant coach of the University of Kentucky men's basketball team Wednesday, an assignment female coaches say could have a far-reaching effect in bringing equality to the coaching ranks. Locke, 31, is believed to be the first female on-court assistant for a Division I men's basketball program. Mary Fenlon, Georgetown's assistant to the athletic director, started as Coach John Thompson's assistant, but her role was that of academic coordinator. Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino said in a news conference at Lexington, that Locke's duties will be the same as the Wildcats' three male assistants.

Pitino said Locke will be involved with on-court coaching and recruiting but will place special emphasis on career placement, starting with players when they are freshmen. Reached Wednesday night in Athens, Locke said she did not know why she was selected. "Coach Pitino called me," she said. "He really wanted a woman. We talked about it being a figurehead-type position.

I don't think that is what it is. They don't want that." Locke came to Kentucky from Georgia, where she served as an assistant coach on the women's basketball team since 1985. She was an All-Amer ican player with the Bulldogs in her senior season of 1980-81. "If they're going to hire a woman, they've hired the right one," Andy Landers, the Georgia women's coach, told reporters. Pitino called Locke one of the best female assistants in the country.

"She comes to us with the highest compliments of every coach we contacted," he said. Locke said she hopes the move will benefit other women. "It's a great opportunity," she said. "If it paves the way or helps others into coaching, I want to see that happen." Some of the country's prominent women's coaches believe it will. "I think it is a smart and good move by Rick Pitino," said Tara VanDer-veer, the Stanford women's coach who led the Cardinal to an NCAA title last season.

"Women can add positive things to group dynamics. Bernadette will bring a different insight into the system." VanDerveer and another highly successful women's coach Joan Bonvicini of Cal State Long Beach consider Locke's hiring a groundbreaking move. "Maybe this will let quality people get other jobs not based on their gender," VanDerveer said. "Women have been totally limited to women's teams, whereas men have been coaching women. This makes it more of a two- way street." Kentucky players could not be reached for comment.

But Pitino told reporters he did not discuss the move with the team. "This is not the NBA," he said. "We don't ask (them) who(m) to hire. This is not someone who is just starting out as a young graduate assistant. Bernadette just has to be herself and she'll be OK.

She knows that" Locke Is confident she will succeed in one of the country's highly regarded programs. "Teaching basketball is teaching basketball," she said. "A pick is still a pick. Any new coach who comes into a situation will have to take time to gain the respect of the players. I'm sure it is going to fun, but a lot of hard work on this journey.

Hopefully, I'll just blend in." However, the situation will be pressure-packed. "People will be watching," VanDerveer said. "It's a visible program. She has the added responsibility and pressure. She will be carrying the torch." Bonvicini, who has coached against Locke for five years, said her rival Is a good role model for young men as well as women.

Bonvicini said Locke has the kind of personality to succeed. "As long as you have the knowledge, the kids will trust you," Bonvicini said. "It doesn't matter if you're a man or woman." Lindy's Surprises Include Predictions, Publication Date to win the national championship If you want another surprise, check out Lindy's ranking of teams by position. UT coach Johnny Majors is advised to read this only while lying down. UT's linebackers are rated the best in the SEC.

UT's secondary is rated the best in the SEC. And you thought the Vols had problems on defense. If UT truly has the best linebackers and secondary in the SEC, it will not finish second to Auburn. It will not finish second to anybody. Conversely, UT's stellar offensive line is only ranked third, behind Auburn's and Alabama's.

Stranger still, UT's receivers are ranked below Alabama's, Auburn's and Mississippi State's. Misslssirmi State's? Mavhe Lindv's By John Adams Scripps Howard News Service The National Basketball Association championship series was two games old. The major-league baseball season was young enough for the Chicago White Sox to nurture dreams of a championship. The French Open, not Wimbledon, held the center stage of tennis. The last leg of the Triple Crown was anybody's guess.

It was the first week of June; college football was a summer away. Except on the newsstand. "Vols Set Sights On Sugar Bowl," the headline read. A more appropriate headline would have been: "Lindy's SEC Football Breaks Record." The record has not been confirmed by either The Guinness Book of World Records or the Southeastern Conference Office. But Kelly Disher, the manager of a Knoxville, bookstore can't remember seeing a preseason SEC football publication the first week of June.

"Usually we get them the first week in July," she said. Lindy's arrived the first week of June. Athlon Southeastern Football isn't far behind. It will be available in Knoxville on Friday and already is available elsewhere. The date of publication is only one of the surprises in Lindy's.

The prediction column is another. Vanderbilt is not picked to finish last. LSU is. Picking Auburn to defeat Tennessee is not surprising. Picking Auburn published too soon.

Athlon also picked Auburn first and UT second. It picked Auburn fourth nationally and UT sixth. Lindy's ranked UT 10th nationally. But neither analyses nor predic i I V) fj ff l.V'u i1 iLLT' AP tions are written as gospel. They are written to help satiate your appetite for college football.

Each year, preseason magazines publish earlier. Each year, more are published. UT fans should be patient. Although Auburn will be the consensus pick to win the conference championship, not every publication will place Auburn ahead of UT. In fact, someone with a magazine to sell or a column to fill might place UT ahead of everybody.

i NASCAR's Moonshine Era Over Midnight Runs Were Training For Drivers By Tony Sakkis San Francisco Examiner Chillicothe, Ohio, is a part of Junior Johnson's old life. The town is a piece of the old era of stock car racing. What happened there inspired Johnson to become the most successful car owner in the history of NASCAR. Chillicothe epitomizes where NASCAR stock car racing has been, and Johnson marvels at where It is headed. Chillicothe is where Johnson spent a year in the federal penitentiary for Operating an illegal moonshine still.

When the green flag drops for the start of any NASCAR race, Johnson competes in a totally different arena and in a completely different world than he knew in 1952. In Johnson's driving days, illegal night moonshine runs were test sessions. Dark country roads were the racetracks. The outlaw mystique carried over onto the sanctioned dirt ovals. Early NASCAR drivers were under financed, disorganized and usually unrewarded for a victory.

But their reputations as renegades pushed the Southern-based racing series forward. Now drivers wheel finely tuned, well-financed race cars many owned by Johnson onto the track. "Junior never lost a race until he got on a track," NASCAR roadie Bob Latford, 40, said with a laugh. But the outlaw traditions Johnson keeps alive in Winston Cup racing are as foreign to today's NASCAR driver as packed grandstands were to racers of Johnson's day. "When I started it was a challenge between your neighbor or your friend: Who had the fastest car?" Johnson said.

"Moonshining was part of my growing up, but it was also part of my training in auto racing. Being in that business, you had to have a very fast car and you had to be able to outrun the revenuers or highway patrol or sheriff or whoever tried to pursue you to try to apprehend you. "And, doing so, you learned how to avoid being caught and you learned how Io outrun the other competitors that you'd race against. There were a lot of people in it who were involved in other businesses, just like sponsors today, and they didn't even know what the moonshining business was. But some of the real key people that produced the excitement that the sport has always had were in the bootlegging business." The drivers who sit on the front rows of most of today's races are far from outlaws.

Always in the public eye, always aware of corporate image, they are public-relation dreams. In addition to being good race car drivers, they now need to be product-line spokespeople. Unlike the drivers Involved in the illicit businesses of NASCAR of the 1950s, they are more visible and more accessible than drivers In any other form of racing. "A driver's got to be a lot more than he used to be," said reigning Winston Cup champion Rusty Wallace, a former St. Louisan.

"He can't just go out there and jump into the car and drive it. He's got to represent the sport in a Bay Hockey Sequel Looks Like It Could Be A Real Hit Ivan Lendl said that his victory at Beckenham should prepare him for Wimbledon, a tournament he has never won. Lendl's Wimbledon Road Starts Out A Grassy One Seals were not very good and there were no stars. We didn't have television broadcasts (of Seals' games). We had to pay for our own radio broadcasts.

I don't think that will happen this time." Indeed, Savage said he has been approached "by people willing to pay good money for the games (on television). Things have changed in 15 years. This is now the No. 5 (television market) in the U.S. "Fifteen years ago, baseball was attracting six or seven hundred thousand fans a year in this market.

The A's and Giants drew five million between them last year," Savage said. The only sticky points are having to play in the Cow Palace and determin- ing exactly when the team can move into a new arena. The Gunds are expected to move to a arena on which construction is scheduled to begin early next month in downtown San Jose. However, there is some doubt when the $100-million facility will be ready. Saage said the team expects to play in the Cow Palace for a year and move into San Jose for the 1992-93 season.

But San Jose officials say the earliest the arena will be ready is late in that 1993 season. The Gunds are financing renovations to the dressing rooms, press area and concession stands in the Cow Palace to bring them closer to NHL standards. By Dave Shoalts Toronto Globe and Mail So far, it seems the sequel to the National Hockey League's story in the San Francisco Bay Area will be far better than the original. Hockey will return to this region for the 1991-92 season, 15 years after the Oakland Seals headed to Cleveland before disappearing into a merger with the Minnesota North Stars. The Seals' blight spread to the North Stars, which is the reason George and Gordon Gund sold the team for an opportunity to put an expansion franchise back in the Bay area.

The initial indication is that hockey Interest hasn't died. Art Savage, George Gund's financial adviser and president of the new entry, has 6,000 requests for season tickets, almost double the North Stars' subscribers. Melvin Swig, a San Francisco developer, was the last owner of the Seals and operated a successful minor-league team in the 1960s at the Cow Palace, where the Gunds' team will play until a new arena is built. He has no doubt hockey will be better the second time around. The population explosion of the Bay Area to 5.5-mil-lion people and the area's affluence will ensure that.

"Wayne Gretzky playing in Los Angeles has produced some excitement on the West Coast that I don't think was present before," he said. "The BECKENHAM, England (AP) Ivan Lendl's road to Wimbledon started happily last Sunday with his victory over Australian Darren Ca-hill 6-3, 7-5 in the Beckenham tournament. The victory was just Lendl's second on grass. He won last year's event at The Queen's Club. But Lendl looked like a grasscourt specialist against the No.

13 Cahill. He served and volleyed with ease something usually not associated with top-seeded Lendl. "I thought this match was the best I played here all week," Lendl said. "I have to be reasonably happy with things. It's my history to be beaten or struggle in my first few matches on grass." Cahill, who defeated Stefan Ed-berg to reach the finals, didn't bow to Lendl.

He played adeptly, even breaking Lendl in the seventh game of the second set. Lendl feels his victory at Beckenham should prepare him for Wim bledon, which he has never won. "It's very simple," Lendl said. "I've won all the other three Grand Slams. It's why I'm playing I've been No.

1, the world champion but I haven't won Wimbledon. I don't know what else to do. "I'm more happy with my game than I was a week ago," Lendl said. "I'm starting to get competitive. I'm getting annoyed out there, and that's a good sign because it means I'm starting to care again." 1 TaylprtorlcySiiTK)n Wl MM QUALITY HOMt by Popular Demand ONE MORE WEEK! Give YOURSELF A Father's Day Present CARFOR ONLY SQQ 1 I INCLUDES WHEELS PAINT JOB Move the kids out! Still have offspring living at home? Is it time they were on their own and out of your space? Just $3,600 total cash moves them into their first home and out of yours! Why not help them make the $3,600 down payment on a ready-to-move-in condominium.

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We've got much to offer to the world." Veteran Bill Elliott said, "Sometimes I ask myself, 'Am I doing PR or am I "If I do this 100 percent right, it's a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. Even the times we have a weekend off, there is no time because we're constantly doing promotional stuff. But the point I have to look at is maybe it's tiring for me, but maybe it's good for the sponsor. "You can't be shy anymore." i That a man like Johnson still is involved in a sport with drivers such as Wallace says a great deal for NASCAR racing adaptability. "I miss the old days," Johnson said.

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