Valley Track Coach to Resign Over Lack of Travel Expenses

Valley College track Coach Mark Covert, frustrated by financial restraints placed on his program by the school and the L.A. Community College District, said he will resign following Saturday’s state meet in Modesto.

Covert was especially angered by the district’s refusal to pay Valley’s travel expenses for the state meet and last week’s Southern California championships in Bakersfield. The district budgeted $12,500 to send its nine schools’ teams to postseason competition, but the money has run out for the 1984-85 school year.

Valley College will pay for its athletes’ trip this weekend, President Mary Lee revealed Wednesday.

Lee said Valley expects to be partially reimbursed by the district after the district is reimbursed by the California Assn. of Community College’s Commission on Athletics, which sanctions the state championships.

If the college had not come up with the money, the athletes might have been forced either to pay their own way or withdraw from the meet, Covert said.

Said Covert: “When the district tells you, ‘Go ahead and have the program, qualify (for postseason play), but if we don’t have the money, you’re out of luck,’ then what’s the sense in having the program?

“The district is telling all the track teams to take a walk and find a way to solve the problems themselves. This is pretty difficult when you get to the end of the season because we’ve spent all our money and we assume the district is going to come up with (the money).”

Track is not the only sport affected--Valley’s baseball team has qualified for the state playoffs--and Valley is not the only college involved.

When Pierce sends two players to the state tennis tournament this weekend in Union City, Pierce Athletic Director Bob O’Connor said, the athletes probably will have to pay their own way and hope to get reimbursed later.

Said O’Connor: “I’m just going to go to one of the trustees after we get the receipts and say, ‘Don’t you think you should pay?’ And I think they will. I’m not really concerned about it. When (teams) get to that level, I would assume that (the trustees) will be able to come up with $1,000 or so.

“It’s just one of those quirks. They must have underbudgeted.”

It’s more than a quirk to Covert, who has been coaching cross country and track at Valley for nine years. His cross country teams have finished among the top 10 in Southern California seven times, his men’s track teams have placed among the top five in the state three times and his women’s track teams have finished among the top five in the state twice in the last four years.

“If the district doesn’t fund these championship meets this year,” he said, “and if nobody says anything and the district gets away with it, then they can do this every year and they will never have to worry about spring sports.”

In years past, Covert said, the district has transferred money from other accounts when its primary athletic fund has run out.

But district spokesman Norm Schneider said “there is no money to transfer this year. . . . The cupboard is bare.”

He said it was “not unusual” that the district had run short of funds, considering that the fiscal year ends June 30.

“I believe it’s a cash-flow problem,” Lee said. “By allocating the funds, we are allowing the students to compete this weekend because obviously we can’t wait for the transfer of funds--because by then the event will have passed.”

Said Schneider: “Unless those funds come back from the state, we won’t have any funds to reimburse Valley College.”

Schneider said the athletic departments at the individual district schools are aware of the fund for postseason expenses “and it’s within their parameters to sort of develop an idea of how much they’re going to be needing and utilizing the funds appropriately. . . .

“There are some cost-saving measures that the colleges could take which would probably give them the opportunity to go to these activities, but they don’t seem to be willing to compromise.

“If three colleges have to go to the same meet, they don’t want to travel together. I think it’s prudent management to suggest to them that when you’re having budget difficulties that maybe that would be one area in which they could compromise. . . .

“But if they aren’t willing to do that, a dollar will only go so far.”

Said Covert: “If you had two basketball teams from our district qualify for the state basketball tournament, would you rent a big bus and expect those teams to drive up there together when they’re going to beat the hell out of one another the next night? I don’t think that would be appropriate. I don’t think they’d put baseball or football teams on the same bus. Yet, they would expect cross country and track teams to do that. . . .

“What they’re telling us is, ‘If you qualify too many people (during the school year), then the people in the spring sports are going to be punished.’ That’s nuts.”

Covert said he initially became angered when Valley athletic officials told him their budget had run out for the school year and that the cost of the track team’s trip to the Mountain Valley Conference meet last month in Antelope Valley would have to come out of next year’s budget.

The problem with the district was the last straw, he said.

“I can’t do this anymore under these circumstances,” he said. “Things were bad before when I first started coaching at Valley. Things have deteriorated over a period of time. . . .

“The program on two different occasions has been canceled and we didn’t get it back until a week or two before school began. Every year our budgets are cut. Every year things are worse. There is no reward for success. There is nobody who’s had a more successful program in that school. You should be rewarded. You shouldn’t be punished. If you qualify for the state meet, they should at least get you there.

“I guess the bottom line is, I’ve had my fill of it. Somebody else can worry about it at this point.”