Olsen Punches Back Into Lineup With Long Smash

George Horton has seen balls hit longer, but the Titan associate head baseball coach said he had never seen a ball hit harder than the one Fullerton first baseman D.C. Olsen sent over the left-field wall at Texas Saturday.

“It was phenomenal,� Horton said. “It might have gone 500 feet if the wind wasn’t blowing in. It probably would have went through the scoreboard if it hit it.�

Horton estimates Olsen’s homer, which came in the seventh inning of Fullerton’s 11-6 victory, traveled 400 to 410 feet. But a stiff wind blowing in prevented it from being a tape-measure home run.

Olsen will remember it, though.

“It hit the sweetest part of the bat and I hardly felt it when I hit it,� Olsen said. “I knew if I hit the ball in the air it would just die in wind, but this one stayed low, like a line drive. It was solid.�

Olsen’s homer was one of the highlights of a three-game series in which the Titans swept the Longhorns and Olsen won his starting job back. The junior went four for nine with six runs batted in to improve his season totals to .400 with two homers, nine RBIs and nine runs.

Olsen, who took over as starting first baseman during the 1992 postseason, when Fullerton advanced to the College World Series championship game, and spent all of 1993 as the starter, had been reduced to a platoon player in 1994.

“It was a matter of consistency,� said Olsen, a former Fullerton High standout. “I was worried about losing my job (in the preseason), I started pressing in practice and got frustrated. But I just felt relaxed all weekend because I knew I had nothing to lose. The ball looked like a grapefruit.�

With all the depth at Fullerton (10-1), Olsen knows his hold on the starting job is tenuous, but Horton said Olsen is the team’s full-time first baseman for now.

“Going from a starter to platoon player can devastate a lot of guys, but the encouraging thing was D.C. never complained or moped around,� Horton said. “He took it upon himself to take extra batting practice, and now he’s swinging the bat better than he ever has since he’s been a Titan.�

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Tables turning: Joey Franchino, a midfielder from Damien High in La Verne, has signed a letter of intent to play for the Fullerton men’s soccer team. Nothing unusual about that, right? Titan Coach Al Mistri, a former Damien coach, said he has signed 25 to 30 Damien players in his 13 years at Fullerton.

But this signing marks the first time in at least 25 tries Mistri has gone head-to-head in a recruiting battle against national power UCLA--and won. Never before has a player with scholarship offers from both schools picked the Titans.

Of course, never before had Fullerton reached the NCAA final four, which it did last fall, and never before 1992 could Fullerton boast of having one of the finest soccer stadiums in the nation, the 10,000-seat Titan Sports Complex.

“It’s very significant,� Mistri said. “Obviously the run we had last season and beating UCLA didn’t hurt, plus we have a significantly better facility. I really believe we’ve been even with UCLA recently. It will be interesting to see what happens now.�

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Add soccer: Martin Palos, a midfielder from Montclair High, and Krista Broughton, a midfielder from Canyon, have signed letters of intent to play soccer at Fullerton. Broughton, the Century League offensive player of the year in 1992-93, is the first women’s player to receive a scholarship at Fullerton.

Titan goalie Mike Ammann, a third-team All-American selection by Soccer America last fall, has been invited to the U.S. under-23 national team workouts Feb. 25-March 5 at Orlando, Fla. The under-23 team probably will feed players to the 1996 Olympic team.

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Rich Man, Poor Man: Former Titan volleyball Coach Jim Huffman had just been awarded $1.35 million in his wrongful termination suit against the school Feb. 8, but there were no “I’m going to Disneyland� proclamations. That’s because Huffman wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

As Huffman tried to leave the Orange County Superior Court parking garage that afternoon, he realized he didn’t have enough money to pay the fee.

“I had to turn around, park the car, go back to the courthouse and get some money from the ATM machine,� Huffman said.

Titan Notes

Baseball coaches Augie Garrido (Fullerton), Danny Hill (Georgia Tech), Larry Cochell (Oklahoma) and John Cunningham (San Diego) will be featured in a youth baseball clinic, Feb. 26 at Titan Field. The clinic, for boys and girls ages 8-12, is part of the Anaheim Hilton & Towers Classic weekend and will be held from 9 a.m.-noon. Reservations for the free clinic are required and may be made by calling the Orange County Sports Assn. at 254-3050.