Under the Gun : Poly High Basketball Coach Forced Out Despite a Winning Record

The cherished tradition of winning basketball at Long Beach Poly High School claimed a victim recently when Chris Kinder was removed as coach. Kinder, who had a five-season record of 79-52 and no CIF championships, apparently failed to meet the expectations of school officials and supporters.

“We’re looking for new leadership for a winning program,” said Wayne Piercy, principal of the inner-city school that proclaims itself as “home of scholars and champions.” Piercy announced May 12 that Kinder will be replaced by Ron Palmer.

Kinder, 37, believes he was forced out at 1600 Atlantic Ave. to make room for the return of Palmer, who won three CIF titles and a state title at Poly while compiling a 270-51 record from 1973 to 1984.

“Why would (Palmer) want to come in and take the job away from me?” Kinder asked during an interview. “Money? No, coaches aren’t in it for the money. Does he need to accomplish anything else in high school basketball? No.”

Palmer said it was time for him to return to basketball after a two-year absence. He quit as coach at Cal State Long Beach in 1987 after three losing seasons.

Method Criticized

Poly fans say they are happy Palmer will be back. But they have expressed sympathy for Kinder and disapproval over how the matter--which raises questions as to whether there is too much emphasis on winning in high school sports--was handled.

“I receive Palmer with enthusiasm,” said John Rambo, a star at Poly 30 years ago. “But it’s sad to see Chris go in the way he has gone. A significant amount of people felt it was not a Phi Beta Kappa move and could have been done with a little more sensitivity.”

Kinder had long sensed an undercurrent to remove him as coach, but said he did not see the decision coming.

“After eight years of service to the school, I was removed from out of left field with no warning, no evaluation, no advance notice that things needed to be different,” he said. “This says you can be relieved for no reason other than maybe you didn’t win as many games as people expected.”

Kinder said he was told by Piercy early in May that “pressure may be coming from downtown (Long Beach Unified School District headquarters) to move me into baseball (as head coach) to make room for Ron. When I didn’t take the baseball job, the next step was to remove me. I did not want to give up the basketball team.”

After last season, Kinder had told the school administration he might step down after the 1989-90 season. “They must have figured that I was only going to be here one more year anyway,” he said.

‘Eased Out’

Piercy, who as assistant principal in the early 1970s had helped recruit Palmer from Pasadena High School, denied that there had been pressure from the school district to reinstate Palmer. But Edward M. Eveland, the district’s assistant superintendent of the secondary division, acknowledged that Kinder was “eased out.”

“It was mainly my decision to bring (Palmer) back,” said Eveland, principal at Poly during part of the Palmer era. “Ever since he resigned (at Cal State Long Beach) there has been interest in bringing him back. I think interest is a better word than pressure . There was concern by parents at the school that there was a need for the team to have a better record. I wanted (Palmer) back in the district so when something opened up I could move him in as a coach.”

Palmer has been teaching at a guidance school in the district.

Kinder, an assistant under Palmer for three years, maintains that he is a victim of “small-group” politics. “It’s a small group of either school officials or people in the community who do not reflect the feelings of the whole school or whole community,” he said.

Although the 1988-89 Jackrabbits had a 15-12 overall record and finished third (5-5) in the Moore League, scouting services have projected that the team will be nationally ranked next season with the return of all-city forward Melvin Jones and all-league center Willie McGinest,

“The timing was not good,” Kinder said. “I stayed through the rough times, but now I won’t get to experience the success.”

“Poly is like a junior UCLA,” said Erroll Parker, the city’s community services supervisor and a former assistant coach for Palmer and Kinder. “When you achieve that much, expectations are sometimes unreasonably high. The community became disappointed, especially the last three years. That kind of pressure manifested itself in getting Chris removed.”

Rambo said that coaches should be warned before they take a job at Poly High.

“Winning is the top of the mountain,” he said. “The community and alumni will not accept anything less. Maybe that’s bad, but that’s the way it is at Poly. They want to see ‘CIF’ on the back of the uniforms of the flag girls.”

Palmer himself was often criticized for not playing enough of a running game--and for losing four CIF championship games.

During his first season as head coach, Kinder had said: “Before our first game, the headlines said, ‘Poly’s 23-game winning streak on the line.’ That’s kind of hard to live up to.”

Low-Key Style

Kinder’s critics claim he was weak on strategy and did not have the respect of his players.

“I’m low-key, not real hyper, that’s the way I coach,” said Kinder, who kept abreast of the game by attending camps and clinics. “I tried to bring the modernization of the game into the high school level.”

But Rambo was not satisfied with Kinder’s leadership. “I didn’t feel good about going to the games,” he said. “I didn’t see the Poly spirit in the basketball players.”

A white coach of a predominantly black team, Kinder was helped his first two seasons by Parker, who, like Rambo, has dealt for many years with inner-city youths.

Parker “was a great buffer,” Kinder said. “The kids would go to him with problems, and he’d relay what they were to me. The last couple of years I did not have someone like him. There could have been problems I wasn’t aware of.”

Jones, the team’s star, said that “some of the players” respected Kinder. “He was good to you if you worked hard.”

Kinder said he had been told that the school was looking for a change of image. “I asked if this was a white-black move, and (Piercy) denied it,” Kinder said. Piercy also denied it to The Times.

Assistants Named

The school is hiring Cordell Tadeny and Todd Irving, who are black, to be assistants to Palmer, who also is black.

“That’s definitely a change of image,” Kinder said.

Parker does not believe race was an issue. “One of the legendary coaches in Poly history was Bill Mulligan,” he said, referring to the current coach at UC Irvine who is white. “It doesn’t wash. Chris just followed a very successful man.”

Kinder’s biggest struggle was keeping players from going to other schools.

“A lot of kids who live in the Poly district decided to go to Lakewood or Millikan under the voluntary busing program because they had lost confidence in Chris’s coaching ability,” Parker said.

Kinder said it was a matter of unfamiliarity: “I wasn’t a known person in the Moore League like Tim Sweeney (of Lakewood), Jim Ferguson (of Wilson), Bill Odell (of Millikan) and Ron Massey (of Jordan). The young kids, not knowing me as a person or coach, would go someplace else or be encouraged to go someplace.”

Cousins Brian Camper and Victor Camper, who were stars last season with Lakewood, and Terry Hilliard, a guard who led Millikan to the 5-AA championship, are among players who live in the Poly district but chose not to attend Poly.

Sweeney said a school should not relieve a coach because of his record. “We are hired basically as teachers,” Sweeney said. “But the pressure on basketball coaches gets greater every year. A lot of it we put on ourselves.”

The pressure has filtered down from professional and college sports.

“There is an overemphasis on athletics everywhere,” Kinder said. He pointed to a ceremony last week at Lakewood High at which Brian Camper’s jersey was retired. “That’s a bit much,” he said.

Rambo said he sees the pressure and commercialism even in junior high basketball.

“I referee junior high games,” he said. “The kids all have on Reeboks and nice uniforms, the stands are packed and coaches are ranting and raving like Bobby Knight.”

Kinder said he doubted whether Ferguson or Massey would be fired for finishing in third place. “It’s a shame when a person can be removed who has a winning record and hasn’t done anything wrong,” Kinder said. “At Poly, above average doesn’t make it, evidently.”

In the fall, Kinder will return to his alma mater, Millikan, where he will help with the basketball and baseball teams and continue to teach U.S. history.

And Poly under Palmer? “We expect big things,” Piercy said.

COACHING RECORDS Comparative won-lost records of basketball coaches Ron Palmer and Chris Kinder at Long Beach Poly High School include their teams’ final standings in the Moore League and how they fared in CIF playoffs. Coach Ron Palmer

Year Record League Finish CIF 1973-74 16-10 3-7 Fifth -- 1974-75 22-5 8-2 First Third round 1975-76 30-1 9-1 First Champion 1976-77 23-7 6-4 Third Runner-up 1977-78 21-5 9-1 First Third round 1978-79 25-5 9-1 First Runner-up 1979-80 26-3 9-1 First Runner-up 1980-81 26-2 10-0 First Champion 1981-82 22-6 9-2 First Second round 1982-83 28-5 8-2 First Runner-up 1983-84 31-2 10-0 First Champion Total 270-51 90-21

Coach Chris Kinder

Year Record League Finish CIF 1984-85 21-6 9-1 First Semifinals 1985-86 19-9 9-1 First Quarterfinals 1986-87 12-12 4-6 Fourth -- 1987-88 12-13 4-6 Fourth -- 1988-89 15-12 5-5 Third First round Total 79-52 31-19