Student Eligibility Rules Are Not Meant to Be Broken

The rules on eligibility that threw Huntington Beach and Savanna high schools for a loss this week are designed to prevent cheating and to protect the athletes.

Nevertheless, a built-in shortcoming of the system is that enforcing the rules often can be painful for the innocent as well as the guilty, officials of the California Interscholastic Federation, the Southern Section and the schools conceded on Tuesday.

The rule requiring parents and legal guardians to establish residency within a school’s boundaries is intended “to prevent school shopping and recruiting” by parents and coaches, said Thomas E. Byrnes, state commissioner for the CIF.

“And it has for 75 years,” he said.

When transgressions occur, they are almost always inadvertent and usually it is the school that turns itself in, Byrnes says.

“In general, it relies on self-policing,” Byrnes said. “All these rules have a logic to them. They are intended to protect the youngster and the educational program.

“In a state of 1,200 high schools there is going to be, at times, ineligible athletes.”

Byrnes declined to comment on the current Huntington Beach and Savanna cases because those matters may yet come before him.

Savanna, which forfeited six victories and a tie Tuesday, had inadvertently allowed a fifth-year senior to play on the football team.

Huntington Beach forfeited eight victories because a player was ruled ineligible by league principals because it was found that he was not living with a parent or legal guardian, as required by CIF. Tuesday, Huntington Beach received a temporary restraining order placing the Oilers back in the playoffs.

Although the standards are set in CIF rules, enforcement is handled by individual schools and their leagues. Currently there are 500,000 athletes governed by CIF.

The statewide rules “keep the schools from recruiting potential nugget athletes from other schools,” Scott Cathcart, Southern Section spokesman, said.

“Our schools work on their honor,” Cathcart said. “That’s what the principal at Huntington Beach had in his mind” when he discovered then reported his school’s ineligible athlete.

At many schools the responsibility is delegated to administrative or athletic department officials to make sure that residence, grades and other CIF standards are met. Ultimately the responsibility lies with the school’s principal.

Enforcement of the rules--which can lead to a game’s forfeiture and a team’s disqualification--often seem harsh and unfair to teammates, fellow students, parents and others who have done nothing wrong, yet also must suffer from the sanctions. Is this justice?

“We don’t do anything that’s not just in the CIF,” said Byrnes, who has seen the issue from both sides.

In 1984, Byrnes’ son’s school, Sunny Hills, forfeited a varsity football game because an ineligible player had participated. The forfeit cost Sunny Hills the Freeway League championship.

“I’m a parent like anybody else,” said Byrnes, whose son was on the freshman team. “I sympathize with the parents.”

In 1987, Orange County’s undefeated, No. 1-ranked football team, Bolsa Grande, was forced to forfeit four games because of an ineligible player who played only when his team was routing the opposition.

“Our kid was eligible by CIF standards,” recalled Bolsa Grande Principal George Willson. Though the student met academic standards set by CIF, which regulates California interscholastic sports, he fell short of the number of credits required of a senior in the Garden Grove Unified School District. Consequently, he was declared ineligible.

“The credit checks just got by us,” Willson said. “He was a minor player. He had been in one or two plays in four or five games.”

By the time the problem was discovered, Bolsa Grande had played one playoff game. The Garden Grove League decided Bolsa Grande must forfeit the game in which the student played.

However, Bolsa was allowed to stay in the playoffs. It lost its next game.

The player was distraught, Willson said. “It was not his fault.”

“It’s something you have to go through to know about. Your heart can only go out to the players.”

Cathcart said he could not recall a school’s forfeiture attracting as much public attention since Capistrano Valley High forfeited its 22-21 victory over rival El Toro in 1987 because of a scouting violation.

El Toro, which consequently was seeded higher than Capistrano Valley, went on to win the Southern Conference championship. Capistrano Valley lost in the first round.

“Before CIF (was established in 1912) kids would play for one school one day and another the next,” Cathcart said. “They had kids who were over age. It was rag-tagged. That’s why the schools decided to join together and run their own house.”

Tom Triggs, La Habra High School principal and a member of the Southern Section executive committee, said virtually every school experiences forfeits because of ineligible players or other rules violations.

“One way or another, every school has had to deal with it,’ he said. “In many of these cases, inadvertently an error is made. If they had known about it, they would have taken care of it.

“That’s what makes it very difficult to deal with. You’re the victim of a circumstance.”

Triggs also has first-hand experience.

“Three years ago at La Habra we found one that slipped through the cracks,” he said.

The ineligible La Habra student was a transfer from a private school who played football although he should have been ineligible for a year, Triggs recalled.

“It was an error on the part of the record-keepers,” Triggs said. The team forfeited the games in which the player appeared. Those four forfeits were enough to keep La Habra out of the playoffs.

Periodically, CIF has explored other ways to handle rule violations, Triggs said, but there have been no reasonable alternatives to enforcing the rules as written.

Should there be provisions that don’t punish innocent teammates when one player has violated a rule?

“Subjectivity, that’s the difficult part,” Triggs said. “When do you say yes or when do you say no? I don’t know whose really capable of making those judgments . . . That’s why it’s spelled out.”

Under the rules, Byrnes said, “either a person is eligible or he is not. Where’s the gray area?”

There may not be much gray area, but sometimes the rules can be confusing.

Foothill High School Principal Jim Ryan recalls a Japanese foreign exchange student who was talked into going out for football this year because “the kids wanted him to be involved in school activities.’

“They put him in for two or three plays against Woodbridge (High School of Irvine). That’s all he played.”

School officials had checked once and believed the student qualified to participate by being in one of more than 30 approved exchange programs listed in CIF rules. As it turned out, he was in a similarly titled exchange program, but it was not one of those recognized by CIF.

“The title is almost the same, but one word was different,” Ryan said. The team forfeited the Woodbridge game.

Most agree that it can be a tragic experience for otherwise innocent students when their schools are penalized for breaking CIF rules. But there is another side.

“What about the teams they play against who had eligible athletes?” Byrnes said. “Maybe that ineligible athlete made a difference.”

Cathcart said the schools who have abided by the rules “shouldn’t be punished either.”