Stripper Goes Up Against Cal State

Aug. 8, 2001 -- A California college student who was forced off the track team for working as a stripper is fighting for reinstatement, and she's becoming a celebrity in the process.

After Leiliani Rios threatened legal action against California State University, Fullerton, where she was a top runner, the track team has agreed to let her resume practicing. But school officials say she can't compete because her grade-point average doesn't meet NCAA standards.

Her lawyer, Joe Tacopina, says her poor grades — which include two F's in track — are a result of being thrown off the team. Tacopina says his client will sue if she is not allowed to compete this season.

Meanwhile, a Los Angeles radio station has held a fund-raiser to support Rios' efforts to compete again, and she has caught the attention of modeling agencies and movie producers who are interested in optioning her story.And she will be appearing in Playboy magazine.

Running From Poverty

Rios, who grew up in a rough section of San Bernardino, Calif., took up running at a young age. Her mother says her daughter's impoverished upbringing motivated her athletic success.

"It's almost as if she was saying, 'I'm going to run out of poverty. I'm getting out of the ghetto,'" says Cheryl Rios. "'I'm going to run for my life.'"

Leilani Rios had a dream of becoming the first in her family to go to college, and it came true when she was recruited to run at Cal State, Fullerton. From the start, she was one of the school's top female runners.

Between the demands of schoolwork and training, however, Rios had a difficult time making enough money to pay her tuition and living expenses.

Stripping turned out to be a lucrative solution. Working as an exotic dancer at the Flamingo Club in Anaheim, she could earn as much as $2,000 per week for herself and her husband, who says he isn't bothered by her job.

"I actually only have to work one, two nights a week and I'll make the same, maybe a little bit more than working at a Burger King or a McDonald's six, seven days a week," says Rios.

Difficult Ultimatum

But Rios soon paid a price for her high-paying job. Three months after she started, she says, some players from her university's championship baseball team showed up at the club.

"They're going to see me," she says she thought to herself, "and if they see me, they're going to start ratting on me."

Indeed, her secret quickly reached her track coach, John Elders. He told her that she would either have to quit the team, or give up her job.

"I didn't deem that that kind of work was really representing the university in the kind of way that we wanted," says Elders. "If I have strippers on my team, that's not something I think that a lot of parents want to send their 18-year-old daughters to be a part of."

Controversy on Campus

Rios says she was shocked by the ultimatum but did not have a choice: She couldn't afford to quit her job. "Since I work, it pays for my school," she says. "School is more important to me than doing sports."

Word got out about Rios' situation and when an article appeared on the front page of the college newspaper, her story ignited a controversy across the campus.

The coach's edict divided his track team.

Fellow runner Casey Higgins thinks the coach overreacted. "He's using his morality on her," says Higgins. "And for him to impose his morality on her, I don't think that's fair."

But another athlete on the track team, Quincy Simms, sides with the coach. "It's a privilege to be on a sports team here, not a right," he says. "Coach doesn't have to keep you on the team at any time."

The university initially came down on the side of Elders. The athletic code of conduct, which Rios and all student athletes sign before joining a team, says student athletes should "conduct themselves in a manner that positively represents the athletic department both on and off the field."

"I think it's clear that exotic dancing is something that doesn't really reflect positively on, you know, collegiate athletic programs," Elders says.

But Rios' lawyer says Elders' edict was based on his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and that the university violated her First Amendment rights when it forced Rios to choose between her job and the team.

"Allowing the religious beliefs of this coach to interfere with whether or not Rios is allowed to be a member of the track team in inappropriate," Tacopina says. "It's unconstitutional, and it's also wrong."

Double Standard?

But what disturbs Tacopina most is that the university never punished the baseball players — who Rios believes tattled on her — for patronizing a strip club. He says it's a double standard.

"They find it fit to allow the Cal State, Fullerton baseball players who are wearing items that attribute them to the university — unlike Leilani Rios — to just get by with a walk," Tacopina says.

The baseball coach declined to speak with Downtown, but a spokesman for the university said there is no confirmation that any baseball players were at the Flamingo Club that night.

Nevertheless, the spokesman said, the coach took the opportunity to review the code of conduct with his players and told them to stop patronizing strip clubs or quit the team.