National Wrestling Hall Of Fame

Frank Addleman, longtime Santa Ana College wrestling coach, will be inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame during ceremonies Nov. 17 at the Pacific Hotel in Anaheim. Addleman coached from 1961 to 1981 at Santa Ana and his 1971 team won the state title. He has coached seven individual national champions, 13 state champions and 35 of his wrestlers were All-Americans.

Frank Addleman, longtime Santa Ana College wrestling coach, will be inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame during ceremonies Nov. 17 at the Pacific Hotel in Anaheim. Addleman coached from 1961 to 1981 at Santa Ana and his 1971 team won the state title. He has coached seven individual national champions, 13 state champions and 35 of his wrestlers were All-Americans.

Oklahoma State athletic director Myron Roderick announced his resignation today to become president of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. The resignation is effective June 30. "It is with mixed emotions that I make this decision," Roderick, 55, said in a statement issued through the school's sports information department.

Michael Caruso and Wade Schalles, both repeat NCAA champions, were named to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, along with the late Richard Barker, longtime coach at Cornell College of Iowa. Caruso, Lehigh's only three-time NCAA champion, won 57 of his 58 collegiate bouts in the late 1960s. Schalles' 821 victories and 530 falls over two decades is a world record. He won four NCAA championships at Clarion in the early 1970s. Barker was undefeated as a wrestler for Iowa State in the 1920s.

Michael Simpson of Anaheim has been named California's Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award winner by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla. The award is based on athletic, academic and community achievement. It is named for the 1984 Olympic wrestling champion, who was murdered in 1996.

Six Southland men will receive the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's "Lifetime to Service Award" in ceremonies Friday at Balboa Pavilion in Newport Beach. The honorees are: * Franklin Horpel Jr., who coached at Santa Ana Mater Dei in the late 1950s and started the wrestling club at Orange Coast YMCA, which he coached until his death in the late 1970s.

Rich Bossenmeyer has been hired as an assistant men's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton. Bossenmeyer, a former head coach at Orange High for six seasons, was an assistant last season at Chapman. He spent one season as an assistant for the Rapid City Thrillers of the Continental Basketball Assn. Bossenmeyer moves into the restricted-earnings position left vacant when Bob Thornton was promoted to full-time status. The hiring completes Coach Bob Hawking's staff for 1998-99.

Jeff Blatnick, who overcame cancer to win a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, died Wednesday. He was 55. Blatnick died of complications from heart surgery, USA Wrestling said on its website, citing a report from television station WNYT in Albany, N.Y. Officials at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady confirmed that he died there of heart failure. Blatnick was a high school state champion in suburban Albany in the mid-1970s and a two-time Division II national champion and three-time Division II All-American at Springfield College in Massachusetts.

Anne Volk Finn Widow of L.A. councilman Anne Volk Finn, 94, who was the widow of former Los Angeles City Councilman Howard Finn and twice tried to follow in his political footsteps, died Wednesday at her Sunland home of complications related to old age, her family said. Soon after her husband died in 1986, she attempted to persuade the City Council to appoint her to his seat. She also led an intense bid to repeal city redistricting that had greatly altered Howard Finn's district.

I watched a video of the movie "Argo" as I flew into Tehran recently. I couldn't help but wonder why I was willingly accompanying a group of Americans into a city that not so long ago was the scene of one of the greatest exfiltrations ever. I wondered if Ben Affleck would rescue me if things were to go poorly. Honestly, I wasn't really worried; I was traveling with the USA Wrestling team and we had been invited by the government of Iran to participate in the World Cup, a tournament where the top wrestling nations vie for international glory.

When Oklahoma State announced last spring that it was hiring Eddie Sutton as its basketball coach, Byron Houston had to hold himself back from laughing. Considering the size of Houston's legs, pulling them was not an easy task. "It happened around April 1, so I thought it was an April Fool's joke," Houston recalled.