PREP REVIEW / TOM HAMILTON : Task of Assigning Basketball Officials Gives Fuentes A Headache or Two

Louie Fuentes didn’t know what he was getting into when he accepted the assignment position for the 312 referees in the Orange County Basketball Officials Assn.

Fuentes thought he could alleviate some big problems when he took on the task of assigning officials for the county’s 72 high schools, but it has been a much bigger task than he imagined.

The problems continue with officials turning back assignments for better ones on the community college or college level or schools canceling games on short notice.

Only one official showed up when the Brea-Olinda boys team met Lynwood in the semifinals of the Laguna Beach Tournament. An official who had worked the opening game filled in.

When the El Dorado boys team met Brea-Olinda in a nonleague game last week, again only one referee showed up and one of the junior varsity referees filled in.

Lyman Clower, Edison athletic director, said he called Fuentes last week to ask who was assigned to the Edison-Capistrano Valley game. Clower said Fuentes didn’t know but guaranteed him two officials would work the game.

Coaches routinely complained about no-shows the past two years, and Fuentes promised to correct the problem when he was elected by his peers as the county’s assigner for the 1989-90 season.

Unfortunately, the problem has continued. What’s more, some athletic directors are complaining that they have yet to receive a master list of assignments entering the fourth week of the season.

“Schools won’t be getting a master schedule until the second week in January,” Fuentes said. “Right now, I’m finalizing the officials’ master list, and the list will be mailed at the end of this week.”

Last-minute cancellation of games and some schools failure to mail Fuentes a master schedule of games until well into the school year has created the delay. He estimated that he received nearly 500 schedule changes since school started in September.

“I’ve had schools cancel junior varsity games, schools add games on the frosh-soph levels,” Fuentes said. “I had one school cancel a lower-level tournament that was scheduled to start Tuesday, and they didn’t call until last week.

“I received a letter from a referee the other day in which he said he would be unable to fulfill his officiating assignments in the months of January and February due to business commitments. I had already assigned him 22 games, and now I’ve got to reschedule all of his games.”

Officials pay Fuentes $1 from their game fees for each game he assigns. He estimated the fee amounts to a penny a day for each assignment when one considers all the work involved.

“It’s a thankless job in terms of the number of hours you put into it, the changes that take place and the stress involved,” said Roy Englebrecht, who also campaigned for the assigner’s position this year.

“It’s a full-time job, but it doesn’t pay anywhere near what a fulltime job pays,” Englebrecht said. “You’re kind of invisible to the schools, but you’re the first one they call when something goes wrong.”

Fuentes said his telephone bill was $283 last month, with most of the long-distance calls a result of last-minute schedule changes. Fuentes employs his wife to set up the computerized assignments and a full-time secretary to handle all calls when he’s out of town on officiating assignments.

“This could be my last year as an assigner,” he said. “I think I could serve the association better by analyzing officials in game situations than I do assigning them.”

Despite the problems, Englebrecht insists Fuentes is the best man for the job.

“If Louie can’t do the job, nobody can,” he said. “I know he’s a little frustrated, and so are the schools. Louie takes a lot of pride in his work and the association. Things are going to work out, just be a little patient.”

When Herb Hill retired as football coach at Loara, he never realized the time off would be so, well, tiring.

Hill, who retired last month as Orange County’s winningest football coach, turned down an offer to coach a team in the Down Under bowl, a series of games players from American high school teams will play in Australia and New Zealand in July. He said the assignment would have conflicted with his work at the UC Irvine receivers camp.

“I would have had to be a travel agent to put together the trip to Australia,” Hill said. “I would have had to collect all the kids and select all the people (to run the team). That’s a travel agent’s dream.”

Hill also won a trip to the Dec. 2 Emerald Isle game between Pittsburgh and Rutgers in Dublin, Ireland. Hill won the trip by leading a membership drive for the National Football Foundation, but he was too busy to go the game.

Much of his time has been spent lately on the banquet circuit.

“I have a lot of speaking engagements and clinics to do,” he said. “But I don’t mind. It’s kind of my last hurrah.

“I’m too young to withdraw from activity. I’m 59 and I want to do something different, and have time for recreation.”

Hill retired this fall after compiling a 191-112-11 record in 31 seasons coaching in the county, including 28 at Loara. He will receive the man of the year award at the 20th Stovall’s All-Sports Clinic Jan. 12-14 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The MVP: Some thought Brea-Olinda guard Aimee McDaniel should have been named the most valuable player in the Tournament of Champions at Santa Barbara last weekend instead of Lisa Leslie, Morningside’s All-America center.

McDaniel led Brea to a 59-48 win over Morningside in the semifinals and the Wildcats went on to beat Los Angeles Washington, 65-61, in double overtime in the title game.

“It’s hard to detract from what Aimee and her team did in the tournament,” said Len Locher, tournament director. “I don’t want to take anything way from Aimee, she’s probably the best player in Orange County history.

“But Lisa was the most dominating player in the tournament. She averaged 28 points and 18 rebounds a game. I made the selection with input from every coach, and Lisa was the unanimous choice as the MVP.”

Brea’s Mark Trakh was named the top coach in the 20-team tournament. Locher said Trakh told him earlier in the week that he would be happy with a 3-2 finish in the prestigious tournament that featured 18 teams.

“It was our strongest field ever,” Locher said.

Add McDaniel: The 5-foot-6 point guard was introduced at the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions as the “Baby-faced Assassin” by Locher.

False modesty?: Unlike Morningside and Washington, Brea was not ranked by USA Today in the preseason, which Trakh used to paint the Wildcats as the underdogs throughout the tournament. But Washington Coach Phil Chase didn’t buy it.

“I hate that false modesty,” Chase said before his championship game against Brea. ‘He has a very, very good team. Brea is one of the top five teams in the country and we are probably in the top 10. The talent is very even. The key is to play harder than they do.”

The Generals will get a chance to avenge the loss when the teams meet Jan. 6 at Brea.