Three former Bakersfield College basketball players from the 2011-2012 team have transferred to four-year schools, and BC coach Rich Hughes said this is ultimately the goal for every coach.
Jon Glover and Rob Rendon are set to play for division-2 school Holy Names University in Oakland, while Jon Baird transferred to Grandview University in Des Moines, Iowa. Grandview is in the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) section.
Rendon played forward and Glover and Baird were guards last year for BC.
“We’re a transition point for kids,” said Hughes. “We’re here to help the kids move onto the next level, and we have a good history of doing that. As far as locally, basketball wise, we send the most kids to the four-year level out of any school. We want to win, but more importantly we want our guys to move on and continue their education and continue playing.
“It is satisfying to have them move on. The competitive side of coaching is you want to win and obviously, it presents more opportunities for your players, but we’ve had some unsuccessful seasons and still we’ve moved guys on. We can help guys that couldn’t do it out of high school, and we can help them achieve their goal of continuing playing and continuing on in school.”
Since he was hired in 2006, Hughes has had 30 players move on to four-year schools.
Tennis
The Bakersfield College tennis program had a fundraiser from Sept. 27-30. The Renegade Cup tournament and fundraising tournament were on Sept. 27, and they had success raising over $25,000. The money goes to supporting the BC tennis teams. Then they had the newly added event the Pro/Am. According to BC tennis coach Terri Lynott, eight local pros agreed to play in the Pro/Am, and committee members were assigned to pros to raise their pros entry fee to the event.The entry fee was $500, and they seeded the pros by how much more money over $500 they raised.
“It went exceedingly well,” said Lynott. “It was amazing because the tennis community showed us a lot of support.”
Wrestling
The Bakersfield College wresting team competed at home in the Bakersfield Renegade Duals on Sept. 29, and posted a 2-2 mark. The Renegades were victorious against East Los Angeles College (32-22) and Santa Ana College (27-18). Their two losses were to Cuesta College (24-21) and Mt. San Antonio College (32-9). According to BC head coach Bill Kalivas, he felt like his squad could have done better than what they showed in their home gym.
“I thought we were a little flat,” he said. “I though we could have competed a little better than what we did. If you look at the line-up, it’s predominantly a young line-up and we’re still kind of searching for our formula to be successful.”
He then went on to mention that 18 of their 25 wrestlers are freshmen. He also mentioned that the previous week he felt like his wrestlers competed at a higher level.
“I felt like there was a better focus, a little more intensity and I thought we did extremely well.”
Kalivas was referring to the Mt. SAC Duals Tournament in Walnut, CA on Sept. 22. BC was 2-2 on that weekend.After the first two matches to open the season, BC has several wrestlers posting good records. In the 149lb class, Ryan Steiber is 7-1, Cesar Luna, 7-1 (165), Quinn Moore, 7-1 (heavyweight), Arko Petrosyan, 6-2 (197), and Max Ramirez 6-2 (141).
The next matches for BC will be Oct. 6 at Santa Ana College.