Rock the Bus, Become Sons of the Desert

Tough place, this Orange County. Play your radio a tad loud, make a sarcastic remark or two, question authority and you can find yourself abandoned in a Sunny Hills High School van 18 miles east of Banning. Desertion in the desert. And by the way, whatever happened to running laps?

You’ve heard the story: Sunny Hills’ basketball team plays in Palm Springs tournament. Team loses Saturday game. Six members of team and two assistant coaches begin two-hour drive back to Fullerton. Mayhem follows.

According to available accounts, several of the players were either:

A) Singing, clapping and joking.

B) Crazed, rabid teen wolves hellbent on destruction of American values.

Whatever the circumstances, the six players later found themselves left alone in a school van, in the desert, in danger. For this, there is no excuse. And good thing the fellas weren’t on their way back from, say, Hawaii. They’d be in life rafts right now, munching on K-rations, sipping saltwater, trying to avoid heat prostration.

One of the coaches, R. Lyndon Boop, said the players’ behavior was unacceptable, that they posed a safety threat. Boop said a bottle was thrown from the van at a passing car, that the players nearly incited fights with other motorists. Obscene gestures and vulgarities were commonplace, he said.

Weary of the noise, of the players’ alleged antics, Boop and another assistant, Mark Kremer, pulled to the side of Interstate 10 in Riverside County, took the keys, and, well, left. Gone. Poof, in a friend’s car. About two hours later, after eating a late dinner at a nearby restaurant, Boop said he and Kremer returned to the van, only to find that a Riverside Sheriff’s deputy had found the six boys and taken them back to the station.

My general rule of thumb is that I don’t strand any teen-agers in the desert unless they brandish Uzis, clackers or Barry Manilow compact discs. Boop and Kremer obviously follow different guidelines.

Now there is talk of disciplinary actions, suspensions, charges of misdemeanor child endangerment. Common sense could have prevented such options.

School, state sports officials and parents were duly enraged over the incident. Maybe several of the players did act irresponsibly, but Boop and Kremer’s solution was silly, if not just as dangerous as the supposed earlier actions of the players. And since when do you punish those players who, as one player put it, were just “kicking back?”

You don’t, nor do you slyly pull the keys from the ignition and say, “I’ll see you Monday night,” as one of the assistants reportedly said as they headed into the night.

The incident sets an ugly precedent. Word gets around: Miss a layup at Sunny Hills and you get stranded at an all-day Tupperware party. An errant jump shot gets you a Pink Belly. So on and so forth.

And think of the implications should the college and pro coaches take notice of Boop’s and Kremer’s methods.

Angel Manager Gene Mauch to reliever DeWayne Buice: “All right, mister, that’s quite enough of the Maxwell Smart imitations. Oh, you say I can’t make you stop? Fine. You’re staying here in Cleveland. We’ll pick you up on the next road trip. Enjoy Lake Erie.”

Ram Head Coach John Robinson to an unsuspecting rookie: “OK, son, turn the Walkman off or you’re out of here.”

“But, Coach, this a charter flight. We’re 30,000 feet over the ocean.”

“So? You’ve got a flotation device, don’t you?”

UC Irvine Head Coach Bill Mulligan to his basketball team: “I mean it, you guys. Either quit chomping your gum or we’re ditching this bus right now!”

Not to be forgotten in all of this is the role--or the absence of it--of area school officials. No one wants to take responsibility for the circumstances surrounding the van incident.

Robert C. Martin, superintendent of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District, says neither Sunny Hills nor the school district approved the summer basketball program in which the boys played. Ralph Trigsted, Sunny Hills’ athletic director, also insists the school wasn’t affiliated with the program.

Oh. Why then were Boop and Kremer driving a school van acquired, by the way, through Sunny Hills Principal Gerald Mieger’s office? Why were practices held at Sunny Hills High School? Why were players wearing Sunny Hills uniforms? Why was the Sunny Hills booster club involved?

In the race to escape accountability, administrators, coaches and parents, alike, are missing the point: Boop and Kremer didn’t plan on abandoning the van that night. They were at the tournament essentially as volunteers, doing a good deed. They became chaperones and failed to properly handle a difficult situation. As for the players, several of them deserve a hearty lecture and perhaps 1,000 push-ups, but not the faint sound of keys being jerked from the ignition. And school officials need to devise a more responsible system that includes waiver forms for the players. The parents’ involvement should go beyond simply waving goodby to their sons.

There is nothing wrong with summer basketball programs. They improve skills, provide another forum of competition and, in the vernacular, keep the boys off the streets. That’s the easy part. Now just keep them off the desert.