State CIF Commissioner to Announce Decision on Ocean View Basketball

State CIF Commissioner Thomas Byrnes today is expected to announce the decision of a three-member panel which he appointed to determine whether to uphold or overturn sanctions the CIF Southern Section imposed on the Ocean View High School basketball program.

Ocean View was ordered to forfeit the Sunset League Championship and 24 victories from the 1984-85 season after Coach Jim Harris was found to have violated CIF rules pertaining to “undue influence” in retaining players Ricky Butler and Desi Hazely--both transfers from Lynwood--at the school. Ocean View was also instructed to return its Southern Section runner-up trophy from the 1985 playoffs, and was ruled ineligible for post season play in the 1985-86 season.

It was that final sanction--barring the Seahawks from the playoffs should they qualify in the upcoming season--that was the thrust of the Ocean View appeal. Ocean View Principal John Myers, in his statement to the appeal panel, said that sanction “penalizes innocent students who have not broken any CIF rules,” and called it “excessive, without precedent and unreasonable.”

In a hearing held Wednesday at Ontario International Airport, a panel made up of representatives from three other CIF sections reviewed the Ocean View case and heard testimony from Myers, Harris, parents of past and present Ocean View players, and attorney Ray Alvarado, who is representing a group of Ocean View parents.

The panel consisted of Rene Townsend (San Diego Section), an assistant superintendent in the Vista Unified School District; Vinnie Contrero (San Francisco Section), an assistant principal at Wilson High School in San Francisco and Chairman Wil Concklin (Central Coast Section), principal of Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose.

Both Harris and Alvarado said after the hearing that if the panel upheld the Southern Section’s sanctions, the appeal could carry over into the courts.

“I said in the beginning that I’ll carry this to its logical conclusion,” Harris said.