Mission Viejo Appeals Playoff Loss to El Toro

Mission Viejo High School filed an appeal Monday to Southern Section administrators protesting last week’s overtime loss to El Toro in the Division III football playoffs, according to Robert Metz, Mission Viejo principal.

A member of Mission Viejo’s athletic department said the appeal was based on an alleged viewing by several El Toro players of Mission Viejo game films at an assistant coach’s home on Sunday, Nov. 26. The meeting allegedly took place six days before Mission Viejo played El Toro in the Division III semifinals last Friday.

But a member of El Toro’s athletic department said only one player, who is a starter, was involved, and he was viewing the Chargers’ 28-14 victory over Villa Park in the Nov. 24 quarterfinals for the purposes of compiling his statistics.

The assistant coach, Bob Bosanko, was not present when the player or players viewed the film at his home but planned the gathering, sources said. The Southern Section is expected to announce today whether El Toro violated Rule 1412 of the Constitution of the California Interscholastic Federation regarding Sunday restrictions.

The rule states: “A school may not play a football game or conduct a scrimmage or football practice of any type on Sunday.” An explanation of the ruling also states that meeting on Sunday “for a skull session or reviewing a game film” is not permitted.

Don Martin, El Toro principal, refused to comment. Bob Johnson, El Toro coach, said he had been instructed by Martin not to comment.

Mission Viejo coaches, who also declined comment, allegedly learned of the viewing of the film at Bosanko’s home a day before their 28-21 loss to El Toro, then later began questioning whether El Toro had an unfair advantage in preparing for the game.

Among the questions that Southern Section officials are reviewing was the intent of the film viewing and the possibility of any sanctions. The constitution does not specify any penalty for a rule violation.

Stan Thomas, Southern Section commissioner, was attending a meeting in Los Angeles and was unavailable for comment.

El Toro defeated Mission Viejo, 28-21, in overtime, to qualify for its third Southern Section championship game in the past four years. El Toro is scheduled to meet defending champion Paramount on Saturday night at Cerritos College.

Ken Sutch, Paramount coach, said he was not informed of any violations by an El Toro coach or player, and that he had not been told of any possible sanctions against the school by Southern Section officials.

“This is the first I’ve heard about this,” Sutch said Monday night. “We’ve spent three 10-hour days preparing for El Toro. We gave our players the game plan this afternoon at lunch and had a walk-through today.

“We exchanged films with El Toro and expect to play them on Saturday night. Anything else would be a complete surprise to me.”