The first ever media day for the best community college baseball conference in the nation, the Orange Empire Conference, will be held on Friday, Jan. 16 beginning at 9:30 a.m. at Irvine Valley College.

Teams in the OEC have captured 15 state titles, headlined by Cypress and Riverside with four each. Orange Coast and Santa Ana have won three apiece and Saddleback has nabbed one title.

In this decade alone, Orange Empire Conference teams have won six of the nine state titles and in three of those state-title games a OEC team had to defeat one of its conference rivals for the crown.

Coach Don Sneddon of Santa Ana is the all-time California community college wins leader and coaches from the conference have sent hundreds of players on to four-year schools as well as professional baseball careers.

The media day event, which will feature remarks from all eight conference coaches, will be held on the Irvine Valley campus in Library room 213.

And it will be the conference's pleasure to have legendary college coach Mike Gillespie, who is in his second year at UC Irvine, as well as former Orange Coast College standout and 15-year Major League Baseball player Brent Mayne as guest speakers at the event on Friday.

The day will be digitally filmed for later broadcast and copies will be downloaded to BaseballAmerica.com, YouTube.com, and IVC.edu. And it will also be shown on Cox Cable in the city of Irvine on Channel 33 for approximately one month.

Coaches will each have 10 minutes to give a preview of their team. And an informed question and answer session will be held immediately following the taping.

IVC athletic director Keith Shackleford will kick off the event with a welcome at 10 a.m.

Gillespie, who coached 16 years at the community college level at Canyons and won three state titles before moving on to USC, will take the stage at 10:07 a.m. and Brent Mayne, who as an All-American at Cal State Fullerton in 1989 and played in more than 1,200 games in the Majors, will follow at about 10:15 a.m.

Cypress Coach Scott Pickler will speak at 10:20 a.m. and will be followed by Fullerton's Nick Fuscardo (10:30), Golden West's Bert Villareal (10:40), Irvine Valley's Kent Madole (10:50), Orange Coast's John Altobelli (11:00), Riverside's Dennis Rogers (11:10) and Saddleback's Sommer McCartney (11:20).

McCartney, the top assistant at Saddleback, will be filling in for Head Coach Jack Hodges, who has a previous commitment.

A question and answer session will follow at 11:45 a.m. with a sandwich bar lunch for those in attendance after that.