Lyon Deflects Words With Some Solid Play

High school athletes aren’t supposed to be subjected to booing, fan criticism and media second-guessing. After all, they’re teenagers, not scholarship athletes in college or highly paid professionals.

But times have changed, particularly at high-profile football programs such as Newhall Hart, where the performance of the starting quarterback is discussed and debated as if it were a topic for a sports talk-show program.

“As the quarterback, you have to have thick skin,” said Tyler Lyon, a 6-foot-6 senior at Hart. “I can take whatever is dished out as long as I know I gave it my all.”

Lyon, who’s a two-year starter, has been sent through the emotional ringer more than most teenagers.

“I heard Rudy Carpenter say one time the pressure in high school was worse than any pressure he’s had in college,” Lyon said, referring to the Arizona State quarterback.

The criticism started last season when Lyon became the first Hart quarterback since 1984 not to earn All-Southern Section recognition. He was the quarterback last season when Valencia ended Hart’s 65-game Foothill League winning streak.

This season, after Hart lost to Ventura St. Bonaventure, Lyon was sidelined by a shoulder injury, then a concussion. Junior Alex Pettee stepped in and guided the Indians to victories over Westlake Village Westlake, Lake Balboa Birmingham and Division I finalist Los Angeles Loyola.

That set the stage for a game against Saugus in which Hart fell behind early with Lyon as the starter. Suddenly, fans were booing Lyon and chanting for Pettee to come in. Hart ended up winning, 14-7, but the damage was done.

“Even the cheerleaders got involved, chanting for Pettee,” Hart Coach Mike Herrington said. “It was very frustrating. The next week, Tyler is hearing it on campus, ‘Pettee should start.’ There was a lot of pressure.”

Lyon somehow kept himself above the fray.

“I asked him, ‘Do you hear those things?’ ” Herrington said. “He said, ‘Yeah.’ I told him, ‘Don’t you worry about anything.’ The team rallied around him. I’ve seen a couple of our players chew out people who said something bad about Tyler.”

Last week, Lyon turned the boos into cheers by pulling off perhaps the biggest upset of the season. He completed 17 of 21 passes for 260 yards and three touchdowns as Hart defeated unbeaten Mission Viejo, 24-12, in a Southern Section Division II semifinal playoff game.

“We never lost faith in him, and he came out and played outstanding against the best team in the state,” Herrington said.

Lyon has passed for 2,009 yards and 15 touchdowns with only three interceptions going into Friday’s Division II championship game against Canyon Country Canyon at the Home Depot Center. He was able to persevere despite being treated as if he were already a college quarterback, which he’ll be next season when he enrolls at Arizona.

But was it right to put him through something that no high school athlete deserves to endure?

“It’s not fair,” Herrington said. “There’s a lot of development that needs to take place. These are 16-, 17-year-old teenagers, and they shouldn’t be criticized.”

There’s lots of blame to go around. The anonymous people sitting behind a computer keyboard spewing venom on the Internet are here to stay.

Parents of high school athletes need to have a long talk with their son or daughter about how to deal with Internet criticism. The advice: Ignore it or laugh it off as entertainment.

The growing use of television in the coverage of high school sports is adding pressure and increasing scrutiny on players, coaches and fans. Television treats high school games as if they were a college or professional event, but they aren’t and people need to be reminded of that.

Young newspaper reporters, influenced by how sportswriters so openly confront college and professional athletes, must make sure they understand covering teenagers is different. Challenging and criticizing athletes for off-the-field conduct and ethical breakdowns is legitimate. Out of bounds is fueling fan frustration with derogatory comments about individual performance.

The rules keep changing on how to treat high school athletes. It’s true that public criticism and booing can toughen up high school athletes for what awaits them in college or beyond, but it’s not appropriate and shouldn’t be tolerated.

Of course, Lyon knows he’s one win away from being a hero and one loss away from being a bum. Such is life as a quarterback at any level.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.