Sherman Oaks CES’ Status Hinges on Girls’ Teams

Six years ago, Mac Becker looked out on the blacktop and watched a disorganized group of students tossing around the basketball. Sometimes, the ball seemed to go everywhere but in the basket. Yet Becker believed he could mold the group into a team.

It was 1984. The Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies had never fielded a basketball team.

“When we started, we got our kids off the playground,” said Becker, the boys’ varsity coach for seven seasons. “We had T-shirts for uniforms. We just started asking if there were any other magnet schools that wanted to play.”

The program is again in a state of flux.

The Knights, members of the City Section 3-A Division’s Northeast League for two seasons, will participate next season in either the 3-A Valley Pac-8 Conference or again be relegated to the informal Magnet League in which they participated from their inception until the 1988-89 season.

The difference? City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness characterizes the latter as an “ersatz league,” a contrast between visibility and virtual anonymity.

The decision on CES’ fate will be made between the end of the season and early April, Harkness said, and the focal point will be the CES girls’ program.

The move to the Pac-8 Conference has been tentatively approved by Harkness, who said it is “inappropriate” for the Reseda-based school to participate in the Northeast League because of travel and other logistical considerations.

Whether the realignment comes to fruition, however, depends on the competitiveness of the CES girls’ varsity team and the establishment of a girls’ junior varsity team.

The CES girls’ varsity, under Coach Lisa Lewis, is winless this season, Becker said, but none of the nine players on the team are seniors. Yet Harkness has voiced concerns about whether the varsity can survive the creation of a junior varsity team--especially in light of the varsity’s problems.

Becker said that Harkness’ reluctance to schedule league byes--as the City has this season--for the girls’ JV team seems unfair.

“We have other sports that we don’t field girls’ teams in and they work around that,” said Becker, whose basketball team is 7-15, 2-8 in league play.

CES is an athletic anomaly, Harkness said. The school, part of the L. A. Unified School District’s integration program, has 1,500 students from grades four through 12 and boasts an academic curriculum offering a wide range of elective courses.

“Schools like Sherman Oaks were not created to be comprehensive high schools,” Harkness said. “Athletic programs in the conceptual scheme of the school did not exist. People in those programs want to add something that’s not in the master plan.

“Their self-propelled evolution has run into problems.”

After several successful seasons, the CES boys’ basketball program outgrew the Magnet League--which includes other academically oriented, alternative schools in the district--recording a 78-6 record. After years of lobbying, CES received entry into the 3-A Division last season and was placed in the Northeast League, in which it finished 4-8, 9-11 overall.

Requisite to entry, however, was the establishment of a girls’ varsity. A team was fielded, but it has struggled.

“They didn’t have a girls’ magnet league to get seasoned with,” Becker said.

Harkness said he feels that an athletics program should be exactly that--schools should be required to field more than the bare necessities.

“They will field a traditional program or they’ll be in the Magnet League,” Harkness said. “There’s no middle ground.”

It took Becker several years to get from playground to high ground. Middle ground doesn’t suit him.

“They’re the people with all the brains,” Becker said of City officials. “I think there has to be a way we can work this out, so that the baby’s not tossed out with the bathwater.”