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Sidelined Fullerton athlete kicked off track team for stripping
Updated: Thursday March 29, 2001 11:14 PM
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Leilani Rios was a runner on the Cal State-Fullerton track team when some other students spotted her dancing at a strip club. That was the end of her track career. Rios said coach John Elders told her to choose between her sport and her job at Anaheim's Flamingo Theater. She chose to keep dancing because, as a non-scholarship athlete, she needed the job to pay for her education. "He gave me an ultimatum between running and stripping and I couldn't do both," the junior kinesiology major told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "He thinks what I do is morally wrong." Rios, 21, left the team in February 1999 after several members of the Fullerton baseball team saw her stripping. Her absence went largely unnoticed until the campus newspaper, the Daily Titan, reported the story earlier this month. Since then, several local television stations have shown film of her stripping at the Flamingo and interviewed her at the college track stadium. Elders has declined to be interviewed, but he issued a written statement saying he felt Rios' conduct reflected badly on her school and teammates. "I determined that Ms. Rios' decision to remain an exotic dancer would detract from the image and accomplishments of her teammates, the athletics department and the university," he said. Rios complained she was the target of a double standard, saying members of the university baseball team were never disciplined for going to the club and possibly embarrassing the school. The school's athletic director, John Easterbrook, said the issue was dropped after the baseball team was given a review of the university's code of conduct. Easterbrook also said the school supported Elder's action. Another coach said this week that Rios was welcome to try out for his team if she wanted to transfer. "I hate to see a girl give up on running because of something so ridiculous," Golden West College track coach Matt Simpson told The Orange County Register.
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