Los Angeles Athletic Club

David Robinson, 7-foot 1-inch center for the Naval Academy, Wednesday was named the 11th winner of the Los Angeles Athletic Club's John Wooden Award. Robinson, wearing his dress blues, said during a press conference at the Athletic Club that he wanted to share college basketball's player-of-the-year award with Pete Hermann, Navy's first-year coach who accompanied Robinson to Los Angeles, and with his Navy teammates.

Richard "Duke" Llewellyn, the longtime executive of the Los Angeles Athletic Club who conceived of the John R. Wooden Award given annually to the country's outstanding men's and women's college basketball players, died early Friday of congestive heart failure at Hollenbeck Palms rehabilitation center in Los Angeles. He was 93 and died just hours before Wooden. An outstanding athlete in his youth, Llewellyn joined the athletic club in 1956 and worked there for 54 years, first as director of athletics, then as executive vice president.

Past and present handball stars will play exhibition matches at 6 tonight at the Los Angeles Athletic Club in an event honoring the late Jim Jacobs, former U.S. handball champion and boxing figure.

The average price of gasoline in 1959 was 30 1/2 cents a gallon, and now it's close to $4. However, that increase is minuscule compared with how sports salaries have become inflated. Tommy Hawkins, a Notre Dame All-American who was drafted in the first round by the Lakers in 1959 and received a salary of $20,000, says that is meal money by today's standards. As the master of ceremonies at the Los Angeles Athletic Club's John R.

Billy Mills, 10,000-meter gold medalist in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, will receive the 1985 Distinguished Service Award for sports leaders at a luncheon at noon today at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

Richard Nelson, a 6-foot-3 senior setter at Alemany High, is one of the region's top college volleyball prospects for 1999. But how does he rate nationally? Nelson will find out when he plays for the Los Angeles Athletic Club's 18-and-under team at the United States Volleyball Assn. junior national championships in Dallas. The tournament runs from Friday to July 6. "This is the best of the best," Nelson said.

You never know who might get fired next, so I rushed to Dodger Stadium on Monday to pick up the check Tom Lasorda still owed Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA. Lasorda had predicted a division title for the Dodgers but promised a $500 donation to the pediatric cancer ward if the Dodgers finished fourth. A month had gone by, but no check. There was some speculation he'd have to print up some checks before writing one to Mattel, but it turns out that wasn't correct.

For a moment, Nan Wooden Muehlhausen says, her father lost his temper last March. John Wooden -- at 94 a man still sought out for his views on matters of basketball, sports and ethics, education and good manners, man-to-man defense and foul shooting, good behavior and bad -- was in a room full of lawyers and agents, family and old friends. "My dad stood up and said, 'I want my name back. I want to be able to use my name.'

The prestigious John R. Wooden Award, which honors college basketball's best male and female players, apparently won't be given out by Coach John R. Wooden next spring. Wooden, who won 10 national championships as UCLA's coach and who will turn 95 in October, said Friday he was withdrawing his support from the award that is sponsored by the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

For nearly 60 years Wafe Risner has been making his four-day-a-week trek to the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday the 90-year-old Pasadena retired aircraft industry executive hits the sauna, the handball courts, and does a lap on the indoor track. He ends the day with a beer he keeps in the refrigerator in a private dressing area. Priya Sopori, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer, has a rather different workout regime at the downtown club.

The Los Angeles Athletic Club has selected Kansas basketball Coach Roy Williams as recipient of this year's John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching award. The announcement was made at an annual basketball tipoff luncheon Thursday at the club's downtown headquarters. In a short note read to the crowd, Williams praised Wooden and said that he was "flattered, humbled, yet ecstatic" to be honored.

The invitation furnished simple directions. Head west on newly paved Beverly Boulevard, dubbed "America's finest four-lane highway." When nearing the "countryside," turn left on Capri Drive and proceed one block. Ample parking is available for your Model T coupes and roadsters. Follow signs to the first tee, and please excuse the clubhouse construction.

It's Christmas morning and we are sitting by the tree, untying and unwrapping. There are 10 packages and each represents decades of stature in the Los Angeles sports community. As we open, we realize that we have never quite taken the time to cherish such gifts. Our days fly by and we never take the advice of an old friend, the late Al McGuire, who always told us to celebrate the moment, to stop and smell the roses.

Absent the sterling reputation of its namesake, the John R. Wooden Award would amount to little more than a stylish blend of zinc alloy, brass and polished walnut. Largely on the power of the legendary UCLA basketball coach's good name, the Los Angeles Athletic Club has positioned it as the sport's version of football's famous Heisman Trophy.