GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
Pepperdine’s Vice Chancellor of Athletics, Sam Lagana, is a busy man these days. As head of the Waves Club, he coordinates a group of loyal Pepperdine alumni and donors when new projects to help the athletic program arise. He is also involved in the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, which recently acquired a plot of land for YMCA use.
What is the YMCA project in Temescal Canyon all about?
Palisades-Malibu YMCA, for the last 40 years have done summer camps in Temescal Canyon. Somewhere around 10 years ago the property changed from Presbyterian Sinai to Santa Monica Conservancy and we found out that the Palisades-Malibu YMCA could acquire four of these acres to utilize for YMCA programs and so the program today is finally putting that property into the hands of the YMCA so it can be used for summer camps, Christmas tree lot and a pumpkin patch and be a permanent place for YMCA families to have a park and a nice play area for the children. It’s kind of a nice entrance to our community and to serve the Palisades-Malibu YMCA.
What is your role with the YMCA?
I sit on the Board of Managers for the Palisades-Malibu YMCA and in that role I share in the responsibilities of advising the executive director in how YMCA should be serving the Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Topanga communities.
How important is it to give back to the Palisades community after living there for so many years?
I think giving back is critical. I think that we give back in a couple of different ways. We give back to our family in a unique way; we do things that serve our family; we do things that serve our faith. We give back in ways that serve the communities that we live in and the communities that we work in, and we serve a greater whole in our region and maybe even our country in certain ways. I think those are the five components to giving back. The Palisades-Malibu YMCA fills a lot of those components for me. It’s my community; it’s a place where I participated in summer camps as a young person. I went away to camps there and my kids are involved in the Indian Princess Program. So we’re able to give back from the community standpoint in serving the Malibu-Palisades community because it’s where we live. A lot of our people who are associated with Pepperdine University are affected by what happens in the community and the Palisades-Malibu YMCA.
How do your lives at Pepperdine and in Palisades intertwine?
I really have a situation where I have a lifestyle. Pepperdine is part of my lifestyle and my community is part of my lifestyle. Our family has shared in both those experiences. There is a reason why they work together. There are people in our community of Pacific Palisades and Malibu that are involved in Pepperdine. When you look at those two communities, you’re looking at about 35,000 people living in this area that we serve. Obviously there are people in those communities that are in our Pepperdine community, who work here. They have great overlap. A lot of our young people who have gone to school here may have moved to these communities. People from these communities often choose Pepperdine as their school of choice. I think the overlap is tremendous and what Chancellor (Charles) Runnels has done in the community and other administrators through the years who have come before me, it’s just amazing. I’m almost in awe to give back to those communities.
What is the role of the Waves Club?
The Waves Club really is just a gathering of people who can come together, who have been friends to the university, donors to the university, and we’ve centralized them in a group of people who care about Pepperdine and want to see Pepperdine advance in athletics. They have a shared mission to make Pepperdine athletics better in each and every way we can, whether it’s through scholarships or through capital campaigns or through operations. Those people all come together with a kindred mind of that’s what they’d like to do and we call that the Waves Club.
How big of a role are they playing in the new sports complex?
I think these people will have a large stake in the experience of that. We haven’t really introduced that yet. It’s been introduced on the campus a little bit more, it hasn’t been introduced to the great masses yet. As we start to put the first blocks of this project together, it’s important to focus on continuing what we do. We don’t want to disengage people from what they’re already doing. We want to engage people that have the capacity, that want to help us in different ways. We definitely want to keep people doing what they’re doing today. As we grow this, there are people that want to be involved in certain ways. We’ll make more people aware of this as parts of the projects start to evolve. We haven’t really gone that far yet.
How important are ethics in today’s sports world?
I think really, they set the standard for a lot of what young people see. I think it’s probably pretty crucial to think that young people are influenced by both professional and collegiate sports. We try to shepherd them in terms of youth sports and how many young people are playing youth sports and different activities and stuff like dance programs in the YMCA. They should shepherded through character development and shown what’s right and wrong.
How does Pepperdine remain an ethical athletics program?
I think it’s important that we’re always working to do the best that we can. I think that under John Watson’s leadership, we’re constantly moving that way, we’re always doing the best that we can. I think any program in the country is trying to do that. Obviously, glitches occur. How you correct that, how you right the wrong is also a big part of that ethical dilemma. How do you administrate those kinds of things? That’s the real question.
03-23-2006
