North Carolina State Football Coach Quits

Dick Sheridan, citing health problems and acknowledging that the recent death of close friend and former boss Jim Valvano affected his decision, resigned Tuesday as football coach at North Carolina State.

Sheridan, 51, would not disclose his illness, but said it is not life-threatening. He said he can no longer give 100% to the coaching profession.

Referring to Valvano’s death in April at 47 after a 10-month fight with cancer, Sheridan said, “The message was that really nothing is more important than your health.”

Valvano led the Wolfpack to an NCAA basketball championship in 1983, and Sheridan was hired as football coach in 1985. Valvano became athletic director the next year and served in that position until 1989. The two had close personal and business relationships.

Sheridan’s decision jolted Athletic Director Todd Turner.

“I fainted right there,” Turner said. “It was the most surprising thing I have ever dealt with in my 17 years in intercollegiate athletics.”

In his seven seasons with the Wolfpack, Sheridan was 52-29-3.

Quarterback coach Mike O’Cain, 39, will succeed Sheridan.

Auto Racing

Former NASCAR driver Bobby Allison won a spot in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Allison got more votes than any previous honoree in the hall’s first three classes.

Other 1993 inductees include NASCAR drivers Cale Yarborough and David Pearson, Formula One racer Niki Lauda, Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford, mechanic George Bignotti, former Camel GT champion Al Holbert and Rex Mays, best known as a dirt-track racer during the 1930s and ‘40s.

Hockey

The Pittsburgh Penguins announced an agreement with the Central Red Army hockey team that could include sending players to Russia.

The agreement offers the Penguins a chance to establish a scouting base in an area rich in talent. Twenty-two former Red Army players are on NHL rosters.

Markus Naslund, a high-scoring 19-year-old Swede, can negotiate with any NHL team, a federal judge ruled.

The league, however, will not be immediately barred from continuing its agreement with a Swedish league about when players can exercise free-agent status, the judge decided.

Naslund sued the NHL, claiming that the agreement prevented him from playing with any team but the Pittsburgh Penguins, who selected him as the 16th player in the 1991 entry draft. He has played for MoDo in Sweden’s Elite League the last two seasons.

Miscellany

A high school soccer player charged with assault and battery for kicking another player in the head was ordered to serve six months of unsupervised probation and to perform 40 hours of community service.

Dwight Angelini, 18, won’t face trial, provided he fulfills the terms of the sentence, which was recommended in a pretrial report, a deputy district attorney said.

Angelini, a two-time league most valuable player from Harvard-Westlake School, had been ejected from three games before he kicked Ryan Herrera, 17, on Feb. 3. The kick, delivered while Herrera was on the ground, was videotaped by the parents of one of Herrera’s teammates.

Two more Cuban baseball players have defected, increasing the number to six in the last two years.

Osvaldo Fernandez Guerra, 26, a left-handed pitcher, and Luis Alvarez Estrada, 25, a left-handed first baseman, defected in Curacao, an island in the Caribbean where the Cuban B team was playing a series of exhibitions.

In July of 1991, Rene Arocha, now a right-handed starter for the St. Louis Cardinals, defected from Cuba to the West. Three others defected last October in Mexico.

Roberto Duran (89-9) won a unanimous 10-round decision over Jacques LeBlanc (22-5-2) in a super middleweight bout at Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Ray Lopes, an assistant basketball coach at UC Santa Barbara, was hired as an assistant at Washington State.

Names in the News

Randy Stoklos, winner of 116 pro beach volleyball tournaments and ranked third in the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals, will not play in this weekend’s Manhattan Beach Open because of back problems. Dr. Walter Hazzard, father of Walt Hazzard, former UCLA basketball player and coach, died Monday in Los Angeles at 75. . . . The Boston Red Sox signed pitcher Jeff Suppan of Encino Crespi High, a second-round draft pick.