Coaches Abandon 6 Basketball Players on Road After Game

Six varsity basketball players from a Fullerton high school were abandoned in a van alongside Interstate 10 in Riverside County as they returned from a tournament Saturday night because two assistant coaches became angry about their behavior, officials said Monday.

The Sunny Hills High School athletes told Riverside County sheriff’s deputies they had been left in the van on the trip back from Palm Springs for about two hours. They said one of the coaches stopped the vehicle, took the keys and left with the other coach in another vehicle.

The incident occurred when the players’ joviality after their 45-40 loss to Artesia High School upset the coaches, said one of the players before a basketball game Monday night. Three of the players were quietly “kicking back” but the other three were singing, clapping and joking, said Manish Munshi, 16, who will be a senior next year.

The coach pulled over to the side of the freeway “and warned us to keep quiet or he’d leave us there,” Munshi said. The players quieted down for 15 minutes, he said, but then a car pulled alongside the van.

“We started waving and stuff, and he (the coach driving) pulled over, took the keys, and said, ‘I’ll see you Monday night,’ ” Munshi said. The coach then drove off with the other coach in the second vehicle.

Administrators and school board officials of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District were not amused. “This sort of thing is inexcusable,” school board President Marilyn Buchi said Monday. She said the board would discuss the matter in closed session at its Tuesday night meeting.

Sgt. Dave Nordstrom of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said: “We’re always warning people about the dangers of the desert. These boys could have been hurt if they’d tried walking along that busy interstate at night. The smartest thing they did was to stay in that van and wait for help.”

Nordstrom said the six players waited two hours in the van before being rescued. They weren’t hurt, he said. But another deputy said the boys were hungry: “We went out for pizza when they got here Saturday night, and they ate lots of that.”

In a press release Monday, the Banning station of the Sheriff’s Department said: “The team members reported that they were returning from a game in Palm Springs when they were abandoned by their two assistant coaches. The team said an assistant coach had become angry over the loss of their last game and the volume of one of the boys’ radios.

“He pulled to the shoulder of the freeway, took the van keys, and he and the other assistant coach drove with a friend who had been following in another vehicle, leaving the boys alone.”

Riverside Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Coillot, who is based in the Banning station, said he spotted the van about 9:30 p.m. Saturday. It was parked beside I-10, about 18 miles east of Banning.

“They told me that a little argument broke out between one of the coaches and a couple of the players over the volume of a radio. I guess he (the coach) basically said ‘the heck with it’ and took off,” Coillot told the Associated Press.

Coillot took the players, ages 16 and 17, back to the sheriff’s station in Banning, where they called their parents in Orange County to pick them up.

Names of the six boys weren’t released by officials because they are juveniles. Munshi, however, identified the others as Brian McCloskey, Chris Drakos, Brendan Hickman, Walter Mitter and Ray Leoni.

Munshi and others on the team identified the driver as assistant coach Lyndon Boop and the other coach as Mark Kremer. Boop’s girlfriend reportedly was driving behind the team van and the two men left in her car, two team members said.

Players ‘Went Over Limit’

“It had nothing to do with how they played,” said team member David Chisum, who was not at the tournament, but who heard about the incident Monday from his fellow players. “The guys were being real rowdy, and they were told to be quiet. They made a sarcastic reply. . . .

“They were told to quit it, and they went over the limit. So I guess he (the coach) got really mad, and when there was another outburst, he just pulled over and got out,” Chisum said. “We have a really good team, but it was mostly a personality conflict.”

School district administrators declined to identify the two coaches. “This is a personnel matter, and we can’t give their names,” said Shirley Finton, public information and community development specialist for the district. “We’re continuing our investigation.”

Finton said the boys had participated in an invitational basketball tournament in Palm Springs that was not part of the school’s regular season.

Head Coach Expresses Concern

Sunny Hills High head basketball coach Steve White declined Monday to identify the coaches, but he said one was a “walk-on” coach--a temporary employee--and the other was an assistant.

“I can’t condone that kind of thing,” White said. “That’s no way to discipline, obviously, but I don’t know all the details. I’m quite sure, though, that the reason (for leaving the six team members) wasn’t because the team lost on Saturday. The team played a great tournament.”

White said the Sunny Hills High basketball team has a 13-3 record for the 1986-87 school year. “So we’re not at all unhappy with this team,” he said.

White said he and four other Sunny Hills High basketball players, including his son, Jeff, had stayed overnight in Palm Springs after the tournament Saturday night. “The other players went home in the van,” he said.

Neither Boop nor Kremer was at Monday night’s game, and Jeff White said, “They won’t be back.” He said the team was in a school van.

“I’m speculating, but it doesn’t appear to me that the situation was vindictive,” Greg Bice, assistant superintendent of personnel for the Fullerton Union High School District, told the Associated Press. He said school officials had interviewed some of the participants.

Not An Official School Event

Finton said the Palm Springs tournament “wasn’t a school-sponsored event.”

Buchi also said the team wasn’t taking part in an event officially sponsored by the school district. But she said some clarification may be needed to inform parents about such summer events.

“I know I’d be concerned,” she said. “I have a son, and I told him today, ‘Can you imagine how worried I’d be if I heard that you’d been stranded somewhere?”

Times staff writers Marcida Dodson, Elliott Almond and Tom Hamilton contributed to this story.