The Prince and the Pauper : Simi Valley and Royal Highs Are Three Exits Apart on Freeway but Worlds Apart in Basketball

When the skies opened and the rain began to fall, hundreds of high school musicians scooped up their tubas, trombones and bass drums and scurried for the Royal High gymnasium to continue their battle of the bands.

For the next few hours, 12 marching bands each consisting of about 50 members tromped around the gym, performing routines more suited to the open spaces of a football field than the home of the Royal basketball team, which has seen its share of rainy days. By the time the final bars of the last song faded on that Saturday night in December, the musicians left behind a gym floor that resembled the topography of an old country road.

Royal Principal John Fitzpatrick inspected the gym the following Monday, and though he insisted the damage was minimal, he ordered a resurfacing job in the middle of the basketball season, rendering the Royal team homeless for more than a week. The Highlanders conducted some workouts at nearby Moorpark College, but the night before their Marmonte League game against cross-town rival Simi Valley, they gathered at the Simi Valley gym for a practice that wouldn’t start until the conclusion of a 7 p.m. girls game.

As the Royal players waited for the gym floor to clear, they sensed that this was not their finest hour.

“Some of the Simi players were there watching us before they got kicked out of the gym,” Royal senior Dan Presta said. “I felt pretty embarrassed and intimidated. I was a little scared, too. I was afraid they were going to see what we were up to . . . not that it would have mattered.”

It didn’t. The next night Royal suffered its worst defeat in the 19-year history of the rivalry, losing to Simi Valley, 101-53. In a dispiriting season of low points, that Jan. 7 loss ranks at the bottom for the Highlanders, who staggered through a 1-19 season, worst in school history. Other lows included coaching-staff squabbles in which head Coach Gene Hatton and junior varsity assistant Frank Riese stopped talking to each other with two weeks left in the season; a plan--foiled by threat of suspension from school--by some students to wear bags over their heads for the Simi Valley game, and team-wide criticism of Hatton.

These are not happy times for Royal High athletics. During the 1980s, Royal has wallowed in the lower reaches of the Marmonte League in many sports, which is bad enough. But worse, Royal has had to live in the shadow of Simi Valley High, which has emerged this decade as one of the Valley area’s athletic powers.

Nowhere has the disparity between the two schools been more dramatic than in boys basketball. Simi Valley is 26-1 and plays tonight in the quarterfinals of the Southern Section 4-A Division playoffs against Santa Monica at Santa Monica City College. Simi Valley has won four of the past six Marmonte titles and Coach Bob Hawking, who has taken teams to the playoffs eight times in his 13 years, won his 200th game this season.

Since Royal came into existence as the city’s second high school in 1968, the Highlanders have qualified for the basketball playoffs once--and have yet to win a postseason game. Mike Flanagan, the school’s first coach, won a league title in his third year, had two winning seasons in five years, and his teams beat Simi Valley eight of 11 times. When Flanagan departed, he took winning with him. In the past 14 seasons, Royal has not finished above .500. Royal’s all-time winning percentage is .349 (151-282) and its best season was a year ago when the Highlanders were 11-11.

Royal does have its moments. The volleyball team has won seven of the past eight league titles and this season’s boys soccer team has advanced to the quarterfinals of the Southern Section 4-A playoffs. The girls soccer team reached the Southern Section semifinals three years ago, and the girls basketball team has reached the playoffs three times in the past six years. Coach Steve Snyder’s water polo team has dominated the league, winning six straight titles.

But out of the water, the Highlanders have floundered. The football, boys basketball and baseball programs have combined for only one winning season since 1980, and, two years ago, the Highlander baseball team suffered a humiliating 30-0 loss to Simi Valley.

Meanwhile, three exits east on the Simi Valley Freeway, Simi Valley has won Southern Section titles in girls soccer, cross-country and golf during the ‘80s. The track team has won 62 of its past 63 dual meets and produced a state long jump champion in ‘85, the baseball team was ranked No. 1 in the nation for part of last season, the girls basketball team has won 25 straight league games and the past two titles, the football team won a league championship in ‘85, and the boys soccer team has won nine league titles in the past 11 years.

Simi Valley’s two high schools seem similar in every way. Both have more than 2,000 students in three grades. Both send more than 50% of their senior classes to college and about 15% to four-year schools. Scholastic Aptitude Test scores at each school are near or above the national averages of 431 in verbal and 475 in math. On the academic battlefield, Royal comes out a winner, scoring 449 in verbal and 493 in math to Simi Valley’s 427 and 487, but Simi Valley scored higher (63.8 to 63.3) in the California Assessment Program, which measures reading, math and written-expression skills.

But in basketball, Royal hasn’t measured up. The athletes aren’t the problem, according to Marmonte League coaches. “They’ve got kids who are flat-out athletes,” Thousand Oaks Coach Ed Chevalier said. Added Hawking: “There’s no doubt about it, they’ve had kids who can play. There’s enough talent to go around the Valley.”

That theory works in other Valleys. The three schools in the Santa Clarita Valley--Canyon, Hart and Saugus--all qualified for postseason play in basketball this year. In the Conejo Valley, Thousand Oaks and Westlake made the playoffs, although Newbury Park didn’t. But Simi Valley is a different story--and a sad one for Royal.

The reasons for Royal’s problems are far-ranging, including instability of the coaching staffs at the varsity and lower levels, the failure to attract its best athletes for the basketball program, the controversial transfer of athletes from Royal to Simi Valley within the Simi Valley Unified School District, questionable administrative support and commitment to basketball, and the changing demographics of the community itself.

But most people agree the biggest difference between the two programs is Hawking: Simi Valley has him and Royal doesn’t.

When Bob Hawking, then an assistant coach in the program, applied for the vacant head coaching position at Simi Valley in 1974, many of his closest friends thought he was making a huge mistake. Simi Valley was just two years removed from a 1-21 season and hadn’t had a winning season in seven years.

“I was the fourth coach in six years,” Hawking said. “There was no stability and there was constant turnover in the lower levels. The athletes didn’t know from day one to day two what was going on. A lot of people told me not to take the job. They said it was a no-win situation. It was almost identical to the situation that faces Royal now.”

Hawking never blanched. “You’ve got to have an ego in this job. Simi Valley wasn’t going to be anything but successful as far as I was concerned.”

Step by step, Hawking, a physical education teacher at the school, put his program in place. He hired assistant coaches Terry Dobbins and Mike Scyphers, who are still with the school--Dobbins as athletic director, Scyphers as the baseball coach. His current assistants--Dean Bradshaw (six years) and Steve Johnson (four years)--also were granted teaching positions by the administration.

Hawking threw open the doors of the Simi Valley gym and kept them open as long as some kid wanted to work on his game. He started a summer camp that now annually draws nearly 200 kids and features Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick as a guest instructor. Hawking helped establish a competitive youth program and has benefited from a strong feeder program at the junior high level, especially at Sequoia Junior High, which has been undefeated in two of the past three seasons.

Not all was smooth sailing. A fire the day after Thanksgiving in 1978 gutted the Simi Valley gym and forced the Pioneers to play an entire season without a home court. The incident, called arson by local police, remains one of the city’s most notable unsolved crimes. Despite that setback, Hawking’s program endured, evolving into one of the most attractive at the school. It regularly draws the best athletes on campus and elicits envious praise from his colleagues.

Everyone agrees Hawking has worked hard and paid his dues, but he’s also benefited from what some call an unfair advantage. Through the Simi Valley school district’s transfer policy, students living in the attendance area of one high school are permitted under limited circumstances--such as courses offered exclusively at one one school--to attend the other high school. Those limited circumstances do not include athletics, however, and district officials say they discourage transfers.

“We go to all kinds of extremes to encourage students to go to the high school in their district, and no one knows how many transfers we’ve turned down,” said Al Jacobs, associate superintendent of education for the district. Transfers between the high schools usually involve less than 2% of the student population, Jacobs said.

Yet, some of those students moving from Royal to Simi Valley High have been exceptionally tall and athletic.

When Hawking’s son Butch enrolled in kindergarten 11 years ago, he became fast friends with classmate Don MacLean. So it made sense that when Butch’s father started a youth basketball team a year later, MacLean joined up. Who knew then that MacLean would grow to be 6-10 by his 17th birthday?

Aside from being junior starters on this season’s Simi Valley team, MacLean and Hawking share something else in common: Both live in the west end of the city and could have attended Royal. No one expected Butch to leave his father and go to Royal, but many residents on the Royal end of town claim it’s a crime that MacLean plays for Simi Valley.

“If all the kids in the attendance area went to Royal, they would have been league champs this year,” Chevalier said.

MacLean is just the biggest and latest Royal defector. Other notable switches included identical twins Mark and Mike Tidmore, 6-6 players who played at Simi Valley for three seasons ending in 1983, and Scott Simcik, Hawking’s first star player and the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,182 points until MacLean broke his record this season.

Brad Greene is the principal of Apollo High, a continuation school in Simi Valley, and is the father of a current Royal player. He is one of many who are frustrated by the school district’s transfer policy. “It hurts that kids in the Royal district go to Simi,” he said. “I don’t understand why the district has approved those transfers.”

Said Flanagan, who has retired from coaching: “You cannot lose one or two good athletes every five or six years and not suffer the consequences.”

Jacobs, a 14-year district administrator whose children attended Royal, denies the district plays favorites. “We haven’t in any way shape or form tried to manipulate the rules to favor one school or another,” he said.

Jacobs insists MacLean’s request to transfer would have been denied had his mother not been hired as a special-education teacher at Royal. District employees are given the option of sending their children to either high school, a rule used by Butch Hawking, MacLean and Simcik, who graduated in 1978.

Hawking denies charges he recruits, saying, “If recruiting could go on we would have had plenty of players. I’ve had calls from many parents over the years who want their sons to go to Simi. You want the best for your sons and daughters. If I’m a parent it’s not hard to make a decision about which school to go to.”

It wasn’t for MacLean, either, who has no regrets about his choice. “I never had any doubt about which school I was going to. I was just worried about how I was going to get there,” he said.

Said MacLean’s mother, Pat: “We felt that Royal and Simi Valley were academically equal and we sent our daughter Julie to Royal. We wanted Don to go to Simi because of Bob.” Any regrets? “No way.”

Simcik, who was student body president and a four-year letterman for Coach Gene Bartow at Alabama-Birmingham, has little respect for Royal’s athletic program.

“There was no way with the track record at Royal that I was going there,” he said. “The gym was always open at Simi. Coach Hawking was there for me seven days a week. At Royal, you had to fight for your life to get in the gym. I cringe when I think what would have happened if I went to Royal.

“Royal was a joke. They had good athletes who got caught up in the shuffle, caught up in the coaching changes, caught up in the disorganization. The kids there were cheated. If I had a child I’d send him to Simi in a heartbeat.”

Simcik’s younger brother Spencer wanted to play at Simi Valley, too, but their father no longer worked for the district when he enrolled in high school, and his request for a transfer was denied. “I felt bad about it, I even cried about it,” said Spencer, who played for two losing seasons at Royal.

Said Simcik’s father, Jim: “It’s a sad situation. The two schools aren’t even comparable. I’d rather have seen my kids go to Simi.”

Coupled with the loss of athletes to Simi Valley were other losses for the Royal basketball program, which had trouble holding the best athletes on its own campus. Ken Lutz, the school’s all-time leading quarterback and a three-year starter on the baseball team, played basketball his sophomore year but then quit the program in 1982.

“It’s not that I was a great basketball player or had the best attitude, but to this day I don’t feel I was treated fairly,” said Lutz, who attends San Jose State on a football scholarship. “Royal basketball has lost a lot of good athletes because they didn’t have respect for the program.”

Glenn Lipman, the Royal varsity coach when Lutz quit the program and the current athletic director, refused to answer any questions for this story.

Royal lost two more players this season when seniors Ralph Blanks and Manny Escobar, starters on last season’s team coached by Jack McCrory, quit the program. Escobar transferred to a continuation school after football season and Blanks took time off between football and track seasons. Both cited a coaching change as reason for not playing. Hatton is the fourth head coach in the past seven seasons.

“I might have played if McCrory stayed,” said Blanks, who has signed a letter of intent to play football at Cal. “I knew I was going to go through recruiting in football and I didn’t feel like playing.”

Said Escobar: “With a new coach, we would have had to learn everything all over again.”

That has become a familiar lament for Royal players. Hawking has faced four coaches in 13 years and each new coach brought in a different set of assistants. Coaching instability ranks as Royal’s biggest problem, according to most observers.

Said MacLean: “They’ve got to stick with one guy. They’ve got to get somebody over there and establish themselves and you can’t do that in one year.”

Said Scott Simcik: “They need an aggressive coach like Coach Hawking to inject enthusiasm in the program. Hawking started a fever at Simi and they need the same thing at Royal.”

Royal thought it had its Highlander version of Hawking in McCrory, who coached for two seasons before leaving last year to become athletic director and basketball coach at Bear River High in Grass Valley in Northern California. Royal again thought it had its man when Fitzpatrick offered the job last year to Bradshaw, Hawking’s assistant. But Bradshaw declined the offer when the principal could not guarantee him full-time teaching positions for two assistants.

Opinions are split on Hatton, whose background at Royal is in girls basketball. He coached the Royal girls for seven years, won a league championship and took a team to the quarterfinal round of the playoffs before quitting in 1984 to work as an assistant at Cal Lutheran. Hatton, who teaches at Royal, worked with McCrory for one season before getting the head coaching job last year. Fitzpatrick stands behind him but others remain unconvinced.

“Hawking is the total coach and has created a winning attitude at Simi,” said Brad Greene, whose son Roger played for Royal this season. “That’s what we need at Royal. We haven’t had a coach around long enough to become a total coach who can instill pride in the program. I don’t think Gene is it.”

“We didn’t have a lot of confidence in him,” said Aaron Pugh, a 6-8 senior center. “He was dedicated and we had a lot of fun, but when you can’t win, that’s all that’s left. He wasn’t tough enough or hard enough to be the head coach.”

Fitzpatrick recognizes the need for stability and is trying to provide Hatton with on-campus assistant coaches. Of this season’s four lower-level coaches, only Joe Malkinson teaches full time at Royal. But in some ways, Fitzpatrick’s hands are tied.

“In order to have a good program you need stability, and we’re trying to help that situation. But our first priority is academics. Teaching assignments are linked to student enrollment, and it’s not always easy to bring in teachers who can coach,” he said.

That situation nearly forced McCrory to refuse the head coaching job three years ago when he wasn’t allowed to pick his own junior varsity coach. He wanted Bob Patterson, who coaches at Sinaloa Junior High in Simi Valley. Instead, he was forced to take Hatton.

“For whatever reason, my support staff was predetermined,” McCrory said. “That’s just the way it was presented to me by Fitzpatrick.”

District officials hold Fitzpatrick in high regard as a tough disciplinarian, but he has been criticized for his lack of support for athletic teams. Fitzpatrick, who has been at Royal four years, lives in Long Beach and is less visible at sporting events than his counterpart at Simi Valley, Dave Ellis.

Said Greene: “At some games, aside from Hatton and Lipman, my wife and I were the only district employees in the gym. At Simi’s games, they have lots of staff there and that’s not happening at Royal.”

There are other signs that basketball gets better treatment at Simi Valley than at Royal. During the upcoming off-season, Royal must share gym time with a fledgling boys volleyball team while Simi Valley basketball gets first choice on gym time. And it is inconceivable that Hawking would allow the resurfacing of the gym floor during basketball season. The gym is nicknamed the “Hawk’s nest” and Hawking keeps an eagle eye on it.

Countered Fitzpatrick: “The facilities at this school are for everyone. I would not put up with anyone dictating that the facilities cannot be shared.”

Even the demographics of Simi Valley seem to work against Royal, which was opened in response to the massive housing boom in the 1960s when Simi Valley’s population grew in 10 years from 8,000 to nearly 60,000. By 1975, Royal eclipsed Simi Valley in attendance, 2,359 to 2,338. But the trend has shifted in the past 12 years because the development that has pushed Simi Valley’s population to 93,000 has been centered in the eastern part of town. Simi Valley High now outnumbers Royal by nearly 500 students.

Faced with losing teams and declining enrollment, Royal has volunteered to move to the Frontier League. That league includes Agoura and Calabasas, Valley schools that are considerably smaller than Royal, which has 2,000 students in three grades. In four grades, Agoura has 1,700 and Calabasas has 1,300.

“I think it would be a good move for the school,” Fitzpatrick said. “We can be more competitive and that would be good for the school.”

The Royal coaching staff is divided on the issue, but some members of the community are critical of the move. Said Patterson, the Sinaloa Junior High coach: “I think it’s a cop-out. They’ve got the athletes there to win in the Marmonte League.”

That move, which remains merely a proposal, is still more than a year away. In the meantime, the Royal basketball program searches for direction. The signs of disorganization were unmistakable this season. In Royal’s loss to Simi Valley, players wandered from the bench and mingled with friends in the crowd while there were still a few minutes left in the game. Players rebelled against Hatton’s substitution system in which he replaced five players at a time, and they criticized his coaching style.

“He kind of quit on the team and you knew what to expect each game--a loss,” Pugh said. “We complained when he substituted five guys at a time and he stopped for a while, but then he started doing the same thing, just one at a time. It was like a park and rec team. He wanted to please everybody.”

According to Frank Riese, the assistant junior varsity coach who openly says he wants Hatton’s job, Hatton stopped talking to him after he informed Fitzpatrick of complaints from parents about the coach. Hatton refused to respond to specific charges about his coaching, saying he was satisfied with the season.

“It wasn’t a disappointing season for me. I feel good when the sun shines and when kids get a good feeling from participating in a program. I feel good about myself. It’s a great life.”

Perhaps, but not all members of the basketball team shared his sunny view, especially when they learned that some of their classmates planned to wear bags over their heads for the Simi Valley game. But school officials scuttled the plan, threatening to suspend bag-wearing student-athletes from their respective teams.

“Coach Hatton told us about the bags and that made us pretty mad,” said Presta, a senior guard. “That was a disgrace to us, putting us down.”

During the final home game of the season--a 57-46 loss to Camarillo--Griffin, the Sequoia Junior High coach, sprawled out in the stands and reflected on the team’s problems.

“You hear things about Royal basketball like lack of discipline, lack of structure, no direction and you’ve heard them for years,” he said. “During the JV game some of the players had their shirts untucked and players didn’t sit next to the coach when they came out of the game. There’s just so much little stuff that has always characterized Royal basketball. I don’t know who’s to blame.”

Is blame even necessary? How important is it to have a winning basketball team? Royal is solid in the No. 1 business of a high school--education. Isn’t that enough?

“Sports are terrific, but that’s not my mission as a board member,” said Mimi Shapiro, president of the Simi Valley board of education. “Royal basketball hasn’t been an issue. But sports are important to school spirit. If you have school spirit you tend to do better academically.”

Spirit around the basketball program remains low and the immediate future looks bleak. Four Simi Valley starters return next season for a team that might be even stronger than this season’s group. And Simi Valley’s junior varsity team was 22-0.

The Royal junior varsity was a respectable 12-9, but only four varsity players will return. Hatton has his work cut out for him. He needs talented players and must somehow burnish the program’s faded image.

When Lutz, still one of the most popular former Highlanders in town, visited home this winter, he attended a local high school basketball game--at Simi Valley. “I had heard about Simi Valley up in San Jose and I wanted to see for myself. At Royal, basketball has never been the thing to do.”

That might be the biggest obstacle, that and a dispirited corps of athletes. Presta, who plays football, basketball and baseball, thinks the athletic program has taken a beating.

“Royal has a losing attitude,” he said. “The players expect to lose because Royal comes second best to Simi. That’s where the better athletes want to go. There’s nothing you can do about that. I don’t know how the leadership feels, but I think the teachers and administrators are a little shocked. There’s a defeatist attitude at Royal and that’s a bad thing for the school.”

HOW TEAMS FARED SINCE ROYAL’S INCEPTION

Simi Year Royal Valley 1987 1-19 26-1 1986 11-11 27-3 1985 10-13 14-9 1984 7-15 22-3 1983 6-18 12-12 1982 11-13 18-6 1981 8-14 10-13 1980 4-18 12-11 1979 8-14 13-11 1978 5-15 14-10 1977 10-13 16-9 1976 5-19 9-13 1975 3-17 9-13 1974 11-13 11-13 1973 13-10 1-21 1972 8-16 5-19 1971 14-12 10-13 1970 9-14 11-13 1969 7-18 6-19 19 years 151-282 246-212 Winning Pct. .349 .537