Escoto Out, Crider In as Coach at Cleveland

With the start of the school year just two weeks away, Bort Escoto took the Cleveland High basketball team to Magic Mountain on Tuesday, an excursion he expected would promote team spirit.

Everything went as planned and Escoto, named Cleveland’s coach in June, was fully prepared for the ride of his life.

“Everybody had a great time,” Escoto said. “Everybody was fired up and ready to play.”

Two days later, he went from fired up to fired upon after Cleveland announced that it had hired Los Angeles High Coach Kevin Crider to replace Escoto.

Crider, who could not be reached Friday, led Los Angeles to the City Section 3-A Division final in 1989. He becomes Cleveland’s fourth coach in 15 months. Escoto replaced Marc Paez, who led the Cavaliers to the City 4-A semifinals last winter but resigned in June after one season. Paez replaced Bob Braswell, who left after the 1989 school year to become an assistant at Cal State Long Beach.

Escoto, 24, was hired on a walk-on basis two months ago and coached the team through its summer-league schedule. He said he had been led to believe that the position was his for the 1990-91 season, however, and expressed resentment over the way Crider’s hiring was conducted by Cleveland Principal Ida Mae Windham.

“To be honest, I think she used me,” said Escoto, who coached the B and C teams at Cleveland for the past two seasons and has served as an assistant for six. “When Marc left, it was a mess. I came in and cleaned up Dodge, and now I’m being ridden off into the sunset.”

Windham could not be reached for comment.

According to Bob Kindseth, Cleveland’s administrator in charge of athletics, Crider’s hiring was the culmination of a series of events, beginning with an L. A. Unified School District ruling last week that granted Cleveland status as a minority school. Kindseth said the ruling, which certifies that more than 50% of the Cleveland student body is of minority composition, gave administrators latitude in shuffling teaching positions.

Escoto, who is employed at Cleveland as a noon aide, was handed the job after no replacement could be found for Paez, an English teacher and a member of a minority. At the time of Escoto’s hiring, no teaching positions were available in Cleveland’s physical education department, eliminating most coaches from consideration.

Cleveland sought a full-time, credentialed coach all along, Kindseth said, but had trouble locating one who satisfied the dual requirement of being a minority and an English teacher. Crider, who is black, teaches P. E., Kindseth said.

“None of this is a reflection on Bort,” Kindseth said. “He’s equally as talented as Kevin. But Bort is a walk-on and is not credentialed.”

Kindseth said that even though administrators were uncertain whether the district would grant Cleveland minority status, he and Windham continued to interview credentialed coaches, speaking with “at least seven to 10.”

Kindseth said Escoto was welcome to return as the B and C coach, but Escoto said Friday he was uncertain about accepting. He said he received notification of Crider’s hiring Thursday from Windham’s secretary.

“She called and said Kindseth needed to talk to me,” Escoto said. “But she said he couldn’t come to the phone right then because he was showing the new coach around school.”

Escoto had promised a return to the take-no-prisoners style that had made Cleveland the Valley’s biggest winner in the 1980s.

“I was really starting to adjust to what Coach Escoto wanted from me,” forward Brandon Martin said.