Cypress Basketball Faces Penalty : State Extends SCC’s Probation of Coach to Include Team

Not content with a lesser reprimand issued by the South Coast Conference for a recruiting violation, the California Assn. of Community Colleges has placed the Cypress College basketball team on probation for the 1985-86 season.

The probation, which is subject to appeal, will prohibit the Chargers from playing in postseason playoffs and the state championship tournament.

Earlier this summer, Cypress Coach Don Johnson visited the Norco residence of Jeff Livesay in an effort to recruit the 6-foot 7-inch center from Norco High School.

According to the State Athletic Code it is illegal for a coach to recruit an athlete who lives outside the school’s community college district. The code stipulates that a coach cannot meet with an athlete outside of the school’s district boundaries for the purpose of recruiting.

The violation was discovered by Dave Waxman, coach of Riverside City College, who also was recruiting Livesay. Waxman notified Jim Kross, Riverside City athletic director, who notified Cypress and South Coast Conference officials. Don MacKenzie, South Coast Conference commissioner and Dick Can Voorhis, Cypress athletic director, thought a one-year probation on Johnson was penalty enough. But CACC officials decided to make the punishment more severe.

“Don Johnson may be the winningest community college basketball coach in Orange County, but he made a violation of the rules, and even the greatest coach has to follow the rules,” said Stu Van Horn, CACC public information director.

“Cypress is upset about what happened and about the severity of the penalty, but they have to realize that the merits and the stature of their coach have nothing to do with how we acted.”

Van Voorhis, speaking for Johnson, who was unavailable for comment, met Tuesday with Johnson and school officials to try to decide if Cypress would appeal the decision.

“We are not denying that we made an error. We did,” Van Voorhis said. “But the penalty imposed . . . seemed stiff. We have recourse in this matter, and we’ll know soon what our administration wants us to do.”

MacKenzie did not disagree with the CACC’s decision to impose a tougher sanction.

“If those in higher authority feel more action was necessary than we did, OK,” he said. “We didn’t want to place Cypress on probation because we didn’t think we should hurt their players for something they had nothing to do with.

“We felt it was enough to place a letter of reprimand in Don’s permanent file, and to place him on one-year probation with the recommendation that if he made a similar violation this year, he be dismissed for a year. But he was wrong and will have to accept whatever penalty he gets.”

Johnson, who played at UCLA under John Wooden, has won 389 games at Cypress and coached the Chargers to state championships in 1977 and 1980. Last season, Cypress was 14-13 and finished fifth in the South Coast Conference before being eliminated by Cerritos in the first round of the Shaughnessy playoffs.