Hansen's Notebook: $14.8M, donor-driven U of A golf center puts Wildcats on par with best in college game

The Star's longtime columnist on the deep donor connections that led to Arizona's new $14.8 million golf facility at Tucson Country Club, Pima softball's 26-game streak among best ever, the big-dollar game of college sports' transfer portal, Pima's new AD search, ASU's 10th NCAA violation and more.

Clements, Click, Quebedeaux, Lopez, Salter, other UA golf facility donors a who's who list

Thursday evening at the Tucson Country Club, UA president Bobby Robbins said that the $14.8 million William M. "Bill'' Clements Golf Center was paid for entirely by donor funding. It is not part of a crippling debt service that, in part, led to the firing of former Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke.

It didn't take long to see where the $14.8 million came from. At Thursday's ribbon-cutting ceremony, Vicki Fleischer, senior vice-president for the UA Foundation, sat near prominent donors Ginny Clements, Jim Click, Tom Quebedeaux, Humberto Lopez and a dozen or more Tucson Country Club members.

Robbins indicated that the Phoenix Thunderbirds — long-time operators of Phoenix's PGA tour event — donated another $1 million. Another large donation came from 1965 UA grad Peter Salter of Phoenix, who previously donated in excess of $4 million to the UA's Eller College of Business and the UA's College of Engineering. The complex's short-game facility is named after Salter.

The lead donation, estimated at about half the cost of the $14.8 million compound, came from Ginny Clements, whose late husband, Bill, was a TCC member and president of the Golden Eagle beer distributorship before his death in 1995.

In 2021, Clements met with Heeke and UA golf coaches Jim Anderson and Laura Ianello where she was told of an ambitious plan to build a golf complex on TCC's property. Clements was all in.

"I told them I want to be the lead donor,'' she said Thursday.

It almost sounds easy. It wasn't.

The origin of a plan to build a world-class golf training center began in 1984 when coach Rick LaRose’s team hosted the Pac-10 championships at TCC, an event won by Wildcat golfer Paul Nolen. At the time, UA golf teams played all over town: Forty-Niner Country Club, Randolph North, Tucson National, Oro Valley Country Club, the TCC, you name it..

Over the next 40 years, LaRose tirelessly fronted a plan to build Arizona a complex. But even as the Wildcats won NCAA championships in 1996, 2000 and 2018, they jumped from temporary training sites, temp homes at Starr Pass, LaPaloma, Arizona National and the Sewailo Golf Club.

LaRose, who has been inducted into four golf halls of fame, once thought he had a deal to build a UA golf facility at the school's agricultural center on Campbell Avenue near River Road. That, too, fell through, as LaRose retired in 2012.

But once Robbins was hired as the UA's president in 2017 and got to know LaRose through their memberships at the TCC, the idea gained the administrative backing it had previously lacked. LaRose and Robbins sold the TCC membership on the plan, even though it meant closing the course for six months last year.

On Thursday, Robbins said "it was my mission to go around the country looking at the best college golf facilities and build a better one for our student-athletes.''

That he did. The Clements facility ranks with the Pac-12's two leading facilities, at ASU and Stanford, and with those at the top of the ACC and SEC.

Said UA men's golf coach Jim Anderson, whose team is ranked 11th nationally: "I wouldn't be here if Rick LaRose had not had a dream and vision many years ago.''

Fittingly, LaRose's name is on the wall above the doors at the coaches' offices inside the William M. "Bill" Clements Golf Center.

Pima's 26-game winning streak among Tucson's best-ever

Rebekah Quiroz first made an impact in Tucson's ever-successful softball history in 1999 and 2000, helping her father Armando Quiroz’s Flowing Wells High School programs win back-to-back state championships.

Now, in her fifth year as Pima College's head coach, Quiroz has a 26-game winning streak after Saturday's home doubleheader against Central Arizona College. Incredibly, the Aztecs outscored their opposition 290-76 in that streak, powered by sophomore Camilia Zepeda of Tucson High, who leads the ACCAC in home runs (14), RBIs (55) and batting average (.500).

How does the 26-game winning streak stack up in Tucson's powerful sports history?

On March 21, 2004, a headline in the Daily Star read, "Aztecs' streak ends at 38 games.'' That was when coach Stacey Iveson’s PCC softball team won 38 straight en route to winning the NJCAA national championship. Pima went 71-8 that season.

The ’04 PCC team fits comfortably among the top winning streaks, all sports, in Tucson history. Here's my estimate of the most meaningful Tucson winning streaks of the last 100 years, in no particular order:

• UA softball pitcher Jennie Finch won 60 straight games, 2000-02.

• Sunnyside High's wrestling program won 314 consecutive dual meets from 1998-2011.

• Catalina Foothills High's girls soccer program won 72 straight matches under coach Charlie Kendrick, 2004-08.

• UA men's basketball teams won 81 consecutive games at Bear Down Gym, 1945-51, and 71 straight at McKale Center, 1987-92.

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• Mike Candrea's UA softball team won 47 straight games, 1996-97.

• Tucson High's baseball team went 25-0 to win the 1972 state championship, the only undefeated prep baseball team in Tucson history.

• The 1956 UA baseball team won 25 straight games in 1956, reaching the NCAA championship game.

• Tucson High's basketball teams of 1945-51 won 51 consecutive games.

Quiroz's softball team (which also includes former Wildcat Jennifer Martinez-Abbs and former Salpointe Catholic and Sahuaro pitcher Nicki Johnson among its assistant coaches) was 35-8 overall and 22-2 in the ACCAC after Saturday's games, with three more doubleheaders on the schedule before the region playoffs. When Quiroz succeeded her father as PCC's head coach in 2019, her momentum was stalled by COVID-19 issues in 2020 and 2021. She roared to life last year with a 31-17 ACCAC record.

Now, her team has left a legacy for the record books.

Money talks loudly in college sports

To put some perspective on the money game that now engulfs college sports, get this:

• If media reports are true that former UA center Oumar Ballo accepted a $1.2 million offer to transfer to Indiana, it puts Ballo on the pay scale of UA women's basketball coach Adia Barnes. Barnes' base salary this season was $1.2 million. Doesn't that seem a bit out of whack?

• Washington football coach Jedd Fisch last week hired former UA receiver Syndric Steptoe to be the UW's Director of Player Engagement. For the last three seasons, Steptoe was Fisch's senior director of player and community relations at Arizona. His salary for 2023-24 was $118,000. How much will he be paid by Fisch? Think $200,000 plus. Seattle media recently reported that Fisch's offensive coordinator, Brennan Carroll, is being paid $925,000. At Arizona last season, Carroll was paid $717,000. It's not that Steptoe was underpaid at Arizona. Consider this: none of the UA's three full-time assistant softball coaches, Lauren Lappin, Christian Cochran and Josh Bloomer, are paid more than $109,000.

• An Oregon sports-talk radio host last week quoted former Oregon State running back Damien Martinez as saying he was to be paid $100,000 every three months by an Oregon State-based NIL collective (or $400,000 for the year).

Now Martinez has left OSU and has visited Arizona, with further visits scheduled at Miami, Kentucky and Mississippi State. His asking price? Almost surely north of $400,000. That's the market for a running back who gained 1,185 yards last year and became a first-team All-Pac-12 pick.

Martinez visited Arizona on Thursday and Friday. He was pictured wearing UA jersey No. 6 — the number worn by UA sophomore receiver A.J. Jones — sitting in a king-sized red throne, the type you'd have expected to see at Buckingham Palace in the 1600s.

This is college football? It's not recognizable.

Short stuff: Pima College AD search underway; UA AD Reed-Francois moves offices

• In her sixth week as Arizona's athletic director, Desireé Reed-Francois has made a move that sunshine-starved UA athletic directors of the last 51 years probably wanted to make: She moved out of the windowless AD office at McKale Center into the bright, sunny, spacious 15,000-square foot Ginny L. Clements Academic Center, which houses the UA's C.A.T.S. Academics programs, across the street from McKale. How's this for irony: Reed-Francois' old school, Missouri, last week announced it will spend $250 million to rebuild much of Memorial Stadium, a sum and a plan Arizona had hoped to kick into gear at Arizona Stadium until a campus-wide financial crisis became such a problem. ...

• On Thursday, at the dedication of the school's new golf complex, UA president Robbins, said: "I have a dream that someday we'll build an entirely new athletic department complex just east of the C.A.T.S academic complex on the property where the Beach Volleyball team plays.'' The chances of that happening anytime soon? Zip. ...

• A name to keep in mind: Jake Johnson, a junior at Mica Mountain High School, went on a UA football recruiting visit recently and is a rising prospect despite being new to the sport. He's a 6-foot-4-inch, 185-pound wide receiver/safety who took up football this past season after transferring from Salpointe. He's the son of longtime high school volleyball coach Amy Johnson, now the head coach at Mica Mountain who competed for girls and boys state titles previously at Salpointe and Sabino. His father, Sean Johnson, coached football on staffs at Sahuaro and Cienega. Talk about good genes. ...

• Pima athletic director Jim Monaco retired last week. The school hasn't wasted time in seeking a replacement. On Thursday, PCC administrators interviewed Pima men's two-time NJCAA national championship men's soccer coach Dave Cosgrove and Pima baseball coach Ken Jacome, a rising star, for the AD vacancy. It also interviewed Lance LaVetter, a Rincon High, Pima and NAU grad who most recently was the AD at Wenatchee Valley Junior College in Washington. LaVetter, son of the late Pueblo High School two-time state championship basketball coach Roland LaVetter, has a strong résumé. He served as director of operations for basketball teams at UC-San Diego, Washington, New Mexico State, Portland and St. Louis. ...

• Three NCAA swimming champions from Arizona's Frank Busch era — Marshi Smith, Lacey Nymeyer-John and Annie (Chandler) Grevers — will be guest speakers Tuesday at the UA Student Union's Gallagher Theater from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The seminar will be hosted by ICONS, an independent council for women's sports, an advocacy group that hopes its campus seminars will elevate and empower female athletes on and off the field. John, of Mountain View High School, was the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year. Grevers was a finalist for the 2011 NCAA Woman of the Year award.

My two cents: 10th NCAA violation puts ASU in rare air

Arizona State's football program was placed on a four-year NCAA probation last week for Level 1 recruiting violations that occurred mostly during the COVID-19 recruiting dead period on the watch of former AD Ray Anderson and ex-football coach Herm Edwards.

It makes ASU the most heavily-penalized school in the 74-year history of the NCAA, according to the NCAA Legislative Services database.

The Sun Devils have now been penalized 10 times by the NCAA, tied with SMU at the top (or bottom.) Texas A&M has been penalized nine times, Baylor, Auburn, Florida State and Alabama eight times. Arizona has been penalized by the NCAA six times.

ASU was penalized in 1954, 1959, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 2005, 2010 and 2024, in baseball, football, basketball and track. Its penalties included improper financial aid, improper recruiting, lack of institutional control, unethical conduct, improper employment and academic fraud.

Whenever the Sun Devils hire an athletic director, his or her first charge shouldn't be to win championships, but to follow the rules.