Searching of Souls at San Dieguito High

San Dieguito High School, by any standard, is a good school, easily one of the best and safest in San Diego County.

But three alleged off-campus attacks this summer involving several of its athletes have raised perplexing questions with which administrators, coaches and students are grappling.

The school enrolls nearly 2,000 students in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades from Solana Beach, Cardiff, Encinitas, Leucadia, Olivenhain and the La Costa portion of Carlsbad. Test scores are among the highest in the county and nearly 85% of the students go to college.

The school, on Santa Fe Drive in Encinitas, has a comfortable Southern California suburban feel--a view of the ocean from the parking lots, a sand volleyball court near the principal’s office. More of the male teachers in the yearbook are shown sporting beards than wearing ties.

San Dieguito does not have the “jock school” reputation of, say, Vista High School or Escondido High School. Until last season’s football team, the best teams in recent years have been in golf, surfing and girls’ field hockey.

Searching for Answers

While noting that none of the defendants has yet had a trial to determine guilt or innocence, Principal Sal Ramirez said that the allegations have left him perplexed and searching for answers. None of the athletes had caused trouble on campus.

“I can’t explain it,” Ramirez said. “I’ve done a good deal of soul searching to see if there is something at the school that contributed. I just can’t identify it.”

He likens the case to the pipe-bomb death of a high-achieving student from University High School in San Diego, or the rash of teen suicides in Plano, Tex., or the deaths associated with the high-IQ game Dungeons & Dragons--all baffling tragedies that involved suburban students from solidly middle-class, supportive families.

“It was shocking to see the connection between these three incidents (in La Costa, Olivenhain and Leucadia),” Ramirez said. “I am opposed to violence, and these appear to be senseless acts of violence.”

Ramirez, 50, reflects back to his own teen years in the 1950s for an explanation. The dangerous fad then, he notes, was playing “chicken” with fast cars, as in the James Dean movie “Rebel Without a Cause.”

“There is always a certain amount of testing on the parts of the teen-agers, even from good backgrounds, and this may be an example of that testing having gotten violent,” he said.

“Some people say this was prankish-style behavior. I say that’s hogwash. This is a school where we have only one to three fights a year . . . So to say this is a normal teen pattern is wrong. This is an aberration.”

Ed Burke, the football coach, wrote a letter of support for a star linebacker to get him released from Juvenile Hall. He feels the athletes and the school are getting a raw deal.

At 51, Burke has been a football coach for 21 years, including two at San Dieguito and five at Torrey Pines High School.

At San Dieguito, where football fortunes had been at a low ebb for several years, Burke produced a winner within two years. He wears a gold chain around his neck with a miniature football.

In his first year, the team placed last, but in his second, the Mustangs went 9-3 and reached the second round of the CIF 3A playoffs in what a local sportswriter called a “dreamlike year.”

“I don’t see any difference with these incidents and the stuff that went on when I was in school,” Burke said. “I don’t mean to minimize it; some of these charges are very, very serious, but I can’t honestly feel it happened that way.

“I don’t condone that, but when I hear assault with a deadly weapon, I get a mental picture of chains, knifes, guns, clubs. What I understand from this matter, a couple of people were fighting and one of them did some kicking.”

But the linebacker’s father, a bricklayer, wonders if the school has done enough for its athletes, including his son.

His son is a powerfully built, 5-foot-10, 195-pounder who went to the state wrestling finals last year and led the football team in tackles for two straight years. Teammates say he is a a hard-charging and fearless football player, and his coach describes him as a natural leader.

“Maybe the athletes need special counseling,” the father said. “All through sports, from Pop Warner and Little League, and all the rest of it, we’ve been told: bigger, faster, stronger.

“But nobody ever says what to do once we make these kids bigger, faster and stronger.”