Pressures to Recruit, Win Forced Paez to Re-Evaluate Coaching Job at Cleveland

Marc Paez bought a new car in August. Five days a week, he commuted from his apartment in the South Bay to his job as basketball coach at the Reseda campus of Cleveland High.

“I put 17,000 on it already,” Paez said with a grin. “Tell everybody that’s the real reason I’m not coming back.”

Actually, Paez says a variety of factors drove him away after one season. Citing intolerable off-the-court distractions, Paez last week tendered his resignation as both coach and teacher.

Paez, 30, said he took a “personal inventory” and decided that his days of coaching high school basketball should stop.

“I found this year that there were some distractions, off-the-court distractions, that made the job very challenging,” said Paez, who led the Cavaliers to a 21-6 record and the City Section 4-A Division semifinals. “It had nothing whatsoever to do with the players or what took place on the court.”

Cleveland stumbled early and Paez immediately felt hot breath on his back coming from the stands. He knew that comparisons to former Coach Bob Braswell--who took Cleveland to the 4-A final twice in his four-year tenure before becoming an assistant at Cal State Long Beach--were inevitable.

They were also unfair, he said.

“We started out 1-3 and I think some of these people at that time may have formed clear-cut opinions as to my abilities as a coach,” Paez said. “We finished so strongly--we won 20 out of 22 and lose by a point in the semis--and I would have hoped that some of that criticism would have gone away. That wasn’t the case.”

Paez was also less demonstrative than Braswell, which he said was misinterpreted. But as hesitant as Paez was to jump and shout, he said he was downright reluctant to participate in one of the less forthright aspects of coaching at a high-profile school: recruiting and player brokering.

“If high school basketball at the top level has reached the point where a coach has to actively recruit players, strike up deals with shoe companies and schedule trips to compete with other schools, then I don’t feel comfortable playing that role,” he said.

Before moving to Cleveland, Paez was an assistant coach at St. Bernard High in Playa del Rey for seven seasons and was dean of students. Admitting that his views might seem somewhat “philosophical,” Paez nonetheless believes that coaches should be teachers first and coaches second.

“I’m concerned about the amount of recruiting going on and about the amount of transfers from one school to another,” he said. “There’s blatant recruiting going on, but there is a complete lack of policing on the part of the (L.A. Unified School) district or the CIF.”

Outside influences are more pervasive every year, Paez said, creating unregulated spring- and summer-league seasons that de-emphasize the high school schedule.

“The guys running these leagues are not high school coaches, they are not teachers and they are not educators,” Paez said. “A lot of these guys are amateurs. It scares me to see the amount of influence they exert over kids and coaches and with college recruiting.

“I really find that distressing and disappointing . . . I don’t know that I want to be a part of that situation.”

There were internal forces at work too. Pat McCook, apparently upset over a lack of playing time, tried to transfer to Taft at midseason, creating a temporary rift.

“I’m not a bitter young man,” Paez said, laughing. “I think a few people have gotten the impression that the heat was on and that I couldn’t handle it. If that was the case, I would have done it in midseason, when the heat was really on.

“I’m proud of the season, the job I did, and I’m proud of the players,” he said.