Columnist Dean Juipe: CCSN takes first step toward goal

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, March 23, 1999 | 10:33 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at 259-4084 orjuipe@lasvegassun.com

These guys might be dreaming.

Or they may be on to something.

Either way, they're pushing a novel concept in Nevada: community college sports. Forget our isolation and our previous lack of preparedness, they're talking about having 10 sports programs up and running at the Community College of Southern Nevada within the next 10 years.

The costs may not be extreme, but they will be slightly prohibitive. It's going to take a few dollars to fund all those start-up projects, let alone the travel expenses that will be required to send these teams outside the state for competition.

But CCSN president Dr. Richard Moore and his sports associate, athletic director Mike Meyer, have the ball rolling. They're talking a good game and planting the seeds to raise some tangible money from the private sector.

They also made a stunning hire by signing Rodger Fairless as head coach of a baseball program that will debut in the spring of 2000.

Latching on to Fairless turned some heads.

It also led to this inquiry: Why is Fairless, at 47 years old and with more than 500 victories as a high-school coach, taking his career this direction? A natural assumption is that a man of his talents and reputation could find a major-college job or one in professional baseball if he was so inclined.

But he's not inclined.

And perhaps there was a hint of his reasoning as he made his way to the podium last Thursday when Moore and Meyer introduced him at CCSN's West Charleston campus. "These microphones scare me," Fairless remarked as he reached the front of a small room that was occupied by three or four reporters and a few of the school's strongest supporters.

He does not like the limelight, accolades or extraneous attention.

He has a shell and he's comfortable in it.

At CCSN, Fairless can maintain that type of control over his life and surroundings. Likewise, as the helmsman of a community college baseball team, he can continue to set the law-and-order standards that were the backbone of his high-school programs at Valley and, later, Green Valley.

At a larger school or in the low-minor pros, Fairless might have to change or become more agreeable to a wider range of athletes. At CCSN, he's free to call his own shots and to do things his own way.

Players swear by him. His tactics sometimes match his semi-gruff exterior but he knows baseball and he's good at imparting that knowledge to young men just coming into their athletic prime.

There isn't any doubt that he will have a winning team, probably right away, at CCSN.

It's also entirely possible his team of two-year players could give UNLV and its four-year players all they can handle on the field, although Fairless said his program is a "supplement" and not a rival to the Rebels.

It may lead to a nice arrangement, with CCSN serving as something of a feeder to UNLV.

If the other incoming CCSN sports are put in similarly capable hands, Moore and Meyer will have exceeded all reasonable expectations. After all, there is some skepticism within the city about their many-splendored dream.

They may be biting off more than they can chew.

Or they may have a vision only trailblazers can see.