THE HIGH SCHOOLS : City, Southern Sections Strike Out in Handling of Mighty Casey

By rights, this baseball season should be a great one for Valley-area high schools.

Simi Valley may have one of the best teams in the state. Granada Hills and Kennedy seem ready for another battle for hometown bragging rights--not to mention Mid-Valley League and City Section championships.

But the season has started on a note of controversy--the same way last season ended.

El Camino Real was allowed to participate in last season’s City playoffs even though it was stripped of five league victories because it had an ineligible player. The decision was made, two days before first-round playoff games, by Sid Thompson, associate superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

This season, controversy began nipping at the cleats of one of the Valley’s better baseball players almost a month before the first game was played.

On Jan. 27, Sean Casey, a power-hitting outfielder, was granted a waiver of state eligibility rules. The waiver made it possible for him to transfer to Granada Hills a week later and compete in sports, even though his family had not moved. Casey is presently playing on the school’s baseball team.

The CIF City Section’s Interscholastic Athletic Committee granted the waiver after reviewing evidence supplied by Michael and Sharron Casey, Sean’s parents. The IAC did not interview any Alemany administrators, coaches or students before making its decision. An IAC official said that eligibility waivers are relatively common. Alemany is a member of the CIF Southern Section.

A story published in the Los Angeles Daily News two days after the waiver was granted quoted a City administrator saying that the Caseys “provided notarized statements and other evidence documenting that their son was being harassed by students and faculty.” Although the story did not list specific incidents, it sparked a heated response from Rev. Stephen Blaire, Alemany’s principal.

“The faculty and students are very upset,” Blaire said. “Nobody called me to verify any of the charges. We’re talking about a school whose faculty bends over backwards to help the students. Some faculty members are pretty mad, and I can’t say that I blame them. When you love your school, you at least want an opportunity to defend it.”

Michael Casey said last month that documents the family presented to the IAC included a notarized statement signed by seven people who claimed to have seen an Alemany faculty member hit Sean. He also alleged that a group of students vandalized one of his cars on Christmas Eve last year.

“They caved in the fender of my ZX--a bunch of kids,” Michael Casey said. “We have a good idea we know who did it. It was about 10:30 at night. My daughter was in the garage and heard a horn honk and a bunch of laughter. It cost me $600.”

It was not the first time one of the Caseys’ cars had been vandalized.

Sean Casey, who declined to talk about the reasons for his transfer, said that the door of his Datsun truck was smashed the night of Alemany’s Oct. 4 football game against Pius X. Sean was the team’s quarterback.

Michael Casey said that his wife called Blaire the following week to report the incident, but Blaire did not return the call. “After a while, we just decided to let it go and not bring it up again,” Michael Casey said.

Blaire said none of the incidents involving Casey had been brought to his attention.

“Those alleged incidents were never reported to me,” he said. “They were first brought to my attention during the transfer. I don’t have any information about any harassment other than what the Caseys told me, and I have no way of verifying that what they say happened had anything to do with the school.

“It’s tough to address the problem when you haven’t been informed that there is one. And then to have that accepted as evidence . . .”

Enrique Lopez, Alemany football coach, said that vandalism is common on the Alemany campus.

“I had an assistant coach have his car broken into his first day here,” Lopez said. “It happens all the time, probably once a week.”

Several of Casey’s football teammates at Alemany said that the 6-3, 200-pound Casey was never confronted and harassed by Alemany students or faculty.

“I think that most of the harassment came in the form of damaging property--things that happened while he wasn’t around,” said Steve Klaus, an Alemany football and baseball player. “No one ever said anything to his face.”

Michael Casey said he did not intend “to cause a commotion” by requesting the transfer. “I was hoping that all this would happen without a lot of attention being focused on it,” he said.

“When you have an unhappy child who doesn’t want to go to school, you do what you have to do. We only have one son. If things were as bad as he says they were, then, as a parent, you do what you have to do. There have been too many incidents. We told him to turn the other cheek, but he has turned it past the seven times 70.

“We have nothing against the students or the faculty. Our daughter, Shannon, is very happy at Alemany. Our son wasn’t.”

Fueling the controversy was the accusation that an Alemany coach had hit Casey.

Three witnesses to the incident, who requested that their names not be used, said that Casey played in a senior-junior touch football game during a PE class, and was involved in a scuffle with another player.

Lopez, the football coach, stepped between the players and slapped Casey, the witnesses said.

“Tempers flared and something unfortunate happened,” Sean Casey said. “I respect Coach Lopez, and I know what he did was in the heat of the moment, but it was pretty much the last straw. I had had enough.”

Said Blaire this week: “We have investigated the matter very carefully. It was an insignificant altercation.”

Blaire said that the Caseys asked him to approve the eligibility waiver three days before it was granted by the IAC.

“I told them that I would verify anything they needed substantiated, but I would not come out in favor for the eligibility waiver,” he said. “As a rule, I just don’t believe in that.”

Article 214 of the CIF bylaws states that “students shall be ineligible for all sports for one calendar year in the event that either or both principals decline to approve athletic eligibility.”

Blaire sent a letter to Ray Plutko, Southern Section commissioner, informing him that the City Section had granted the eligibility waiver without talking to administrators at Alemany.

“He said that he would discuss the matter with Jim Cheffers,” Blaire said of Plutko. “That’s all I know.”

Cheffers, the City Section’s director of interscholastic athletics, said he has not discussed the transfer with Plutko, though he has talked to Plutko at meetings twice in the past two weeks.

Casey, who hit six home runs last season, is the sixth baseball player to transfer from Alemany in the past two years. The other five are playing at Kennedy. Dick Whitney, coach of the Kennedy baseball team, said that no harassment charges were made by the other five transfers.

Darryl Stroh, Granada Hills baseball coach, said that he has been accused of recruiting Casey. He did not say who made the accusation. He did, however, respond to the charge.

“I’ve watched Sean grow up,” Stroh said. “His dad has been our school’s physical therapist for years. If I was going to recruit the kid, I would have done it three years ago and been able to work with him as a sophomore.”

Stroh said that he told the Caseys he did not want to know the details of the transfer.

“I’m probably the one person who doesn’t want to know anything about it,” Stroh said. “All I know is that in all the years I’ve been here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen IAC move that fast on that type of transfer. Their case must have been pretty solid.”

But strong enough for the committee to act without hearing Alemany’s side?

“We had no reason to talk to anyone from Alemany,” said Donald Hahn, IAC member and chairman of the rules committee. “We make a decision based on hardship. Our board was convinced by the evidence that was presented by the parents that the transfer was best for the student’s well-being.”

Blaire said that he doesn’t think Stroh or anyone else at Granada Hills enticed Casey to transfer.

“I don’t know of any recruitment in this case,” he said. “I think I signed a form that said that. What I find very disturbing is that a waiver could be granted without being officially checked out. How can a rules committee make a judgment after hearing only one side of the story? To preserve the integrity of athletics, we have to be very careful when we start waiving eligibility rules.”