Angry Coaches Leave Basketball Team in Desert

Six varsity basketball players from Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton were abandoned by their coaches Saturday night while on the way home from Palm Springs in a van, sheriff’s spokesmen said.

The incident occurred after the coaches became angry over high spirits inside the van, said one of the players in an interview before a basketball game Monday night.

While three of the players were “kicking back” and being quiet, the other three were singing, clapping and joking, said Manish Munshi, 16, who will be a senior next year.

The coach pulled the van over on the freeway “and warned us to keep quiet or he’d leave us there,” Munshi said.

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The players quieted down, he said, but then a car pulled alongside the van.

“We started waving and stuff, and he pulled over, took the keys, and said, ‘I’ll see you Monday night,’ ” Munshi said.

The coaches then left in another car driven by a girlfriend of one of the coaches, leaving the players sitting in the van alongside Interstate 10 in the desert 18 miles from Banning.

Administrators and school board officials in Fullerton Joint Union High School District said Monday that they plan to look into the incident at tonight’s board meeting. “This sort of thing is inexcusable,” the school board president, Marilyn Buchi, said.

“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,” said Sgt. Dave Nordstrom of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

The van was spotted at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday by Riverside Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Coillot.

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

Names of the six boys were not released by authorities because they are juveniles. However, Munshi identified the others as Brian McCloskey, Chris Drakos, Brendan Hickman, Walter Mitter and Ray Leoni.

He and other team members identified the van driver as assistant coach Lyndon Boop, and the other coach as Mark Kramer. Boop’s girlfriend apparently was driving behind the team van and the two men left in her car, two team members said.

Administrators in the Fullerton Joint Union High School District declined to confirm the identities of the two coaches. “This is a personnel matter,” said Shirley Finton, public information and community development specialist for the district.

“I can’t condone that kind of thing,” said head basketball coach Steve White, who had stayed in Palm Springs for the night. “That’s no way to discipline, obviously, but I don’t know all the details. I’m quite sure, though, that the reason wasn’t because the team lost on Saturday. The team played a great tournament.”

Neither Boop nor Kramer was at Monday night’s game, and White said “they won’t be back.”

Times staff writer Tom Hamilton also contributed to this story.