Coach Still on Defensive : Recruiting Charges Have Made Santa Monica High’s Hunter Wary of Media

Circle the wagons and ready the defenses. The press is coming out to Santa Monica High School to talk about the basketball team, and that in itself is cause for concern these days.

“First of all, what’s this article about?” Coach Cliff Hunter asks. “I’ve had so much bad press lately, I don’t know what to think.”

Hunter, the focal point of a controversy that has divided the school and, in some ways, the community, walks through a courtyard at the school and sits down to talk on a cement bench. Symbolically, his back is to a wall.

Since last summer, when accusations that he recruited players from outside the school district to play for Santa Monica reached a high point, Hunter has faced critics with unwavering denials. Some wanted him to resign, but he says he never considered it. Why leave when he hadn’t done anything wrong, he figured.

“Hell, just about everyone has outside kids on their team,” he said. “We (Santa Monica) have never broken any rules and I have never recruited a kid since I’ve been here. But somehow, if a kid gets in here--legitimate or otherwise--sure I’m going to play him.”

In any event there was an investigation and one player, Keith Harris, said in an interview with The Times that he had lived in Inglewood while playing for Hunter. Then, just after the new school year opened in September, the Vikings were forced to forfeit all their victories of the previous two seasons. From 47-7 to 0-54, just like that.

As are the best players on the team, Hunter is black, and more than one person has suggested that the whole thing was a racial issue. But Hunter became particularly irritated over the way the situation was handled--players being followed home so that their addresses could be checked, constant front-page stories.

He became defensive with anyone looking into the claims, especially reporters. On the other hand, he knows he didn’t help matters much by not giving interviews, which resulted in stories with accusations from one side and no defense from the other.

“Everyone bent over backwards to show all the bad stuff,” he said. “Of course I didn’t help things by not talking, but when it was blown out of proportion the way it was, that was ridiculous. It was front-page stuff for weeks in a row, and I don’t mean of the sports section.

“Something I would say in a sentence would turn into a paragraph or a page, and by that time it wasn’t even what I did say.”

So he stopped talking, for the most part, and even postgame interviews were referred to the two assistant coaches, Paul Nagel and George Quintero.

Player interviews are only granted now when Hunter is allowed to sit in.

Question: Where do you live now?

Harris: I’m not going to comment on that.

Hunter: Go ahead, tell him where you live.

Harris: I live with my mother and brother (Kelvin, also a starter on the team) in Santa Monica.

Question: Did you move to play basketball?

Harris: I’m not going to comment on that.

Hunter: Carrick DeHart (a starting guard) and Harris moved into the district because they did not want to pull up and move for another school year. They are here for the whole situation, like the academics and the atmosphere.

Another former player, J.D. Green, now a junior, didn’t figure that staying at Santa Monica was worth the trouble, although it was determined that he did live within the district. He, too, had to come up with proof of his address on several occasions.

“In a way, I loved playing there,” he said. “Those guys were a lot of fun. But things got to be such a hassle. The principal, I don’t think, wanted us to be there, the way he was talking.”

What stands out most in his mind was his mother’s being called at work for additional verification of the Green residence after J.D. had met with school officials that week.

“I didn’t think that was right, after I had already given them what they needed for proof that I lived in the district. Why did they do that to me when they don’t do it to everyone else?”

He ended up moving to Los Angeles and earned a starting spot on the Fairfax basketball team. But he didn’t move away from suspicion.

“They were worried about me at Fairfax, too,” he said. “I was getting hassled at first. Someone sat outside my house until I left and then followed me to school. That morning, (school administrators) summoned me to the office, and the principal said he was really happy that I really was inside the district. Now, everything is OK.”

And now that the Santa Monica Vikings and talk of out-of-district players is behind him, what does Green think about the affair?

“That I left a great team,” he said. “That I left my best friends.”

Everything is said to be OK at Santa Monica, too. The Vikings are winning and Hunter said that the forfeits are a dead issue. But not without a parting shot.

“Even with that, we know who got their butts kicked: the other teams in the league. Let them put that in their pipe and smoke it.”

Hunter’s critics would be particularly frustrated by his record, an impressive 88-14--that’s 86%--excluding the forfeits, with three All-Southern Section selections and nine players going on to Division I colleges.

This year, the Vikings, after losing only twice in 37 games in summer leagues, both times by one point to Clifford Allen-led Carson, are The Times’ No. 3 team in the Southern Section with a 15-3 mark overall and a 5-0 Bay League record.

One of the wins was over Coolidge of Washington, D.C., a nationally ranked team at the start of the year. Among the defeats, one was a one-pointer to top-ranked Santa Ana Mater Dei in the championship game of the Tournament of Champions, and another loss was to Palisades, one of the five best teams in the City.

There should be at least one more All-Southern Section 4-A pick after this season with DeHart, who is heading to UC Santa Barbara, or Keith Harris, bound for Kansas. The Vikings lost three of last season’s starters to graduation, but senior Kelvin Harris, Keith’s brother who is in his first year of high school competition, senior Craig Forsyth, also an outstanding volleyball player, and sophomore Keith Neal have filled the holes.

“I can’t say that we are more or less talented than last season,” DeHart said. “But our attitude sure is different. We’re more hungry.”

Better that than on the defensive.