Eligibility Scheme Alleged : Football: Montclair Prep is accused of faking four athletes’ living arrangements in ’85.

Montclair Prep of Van Nuys staged a phony living arrangement in the school’s dormitory to gain athletic eligibility for four football players when the school was investigated by the CIF Southern Section in 1985 on charges of eligibility infractions, according to four sources close to that team.

Five years ago, Principal V.E. Simpson displayed to Southern Section officials the living quarters of four players who the school said lived in an on-campus apartment. After that visit, the Southern Section cleared Montclair Prep, a licensed boarding school, of wrongdoing.

But, according to a former Montclair Prep assistant coach and a former player, the living arrangement was staged expressly for the investigators.

Simpson, who founded the school 34 years ago, denied the charges, saying he assumed that the players, recent transfers, lived on campus.

Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas characterized the charges as serious and said he will include them in the current investigation of Montclair Prep on charges of grade tampering and nonpayment of tuition by athletes. Those charges were lodged against the school after the transfers of Derek and Leland Sparks, senior football players who left Montclair Prep in September for Mater Dei of Santa Ana.

The investigation, the third of Montclair Prep in five years, stemmed from accusations by the uncle of the Sparks cousins, who said Montclair Prep did not charge tuition for his nephews and changed their grades. No hearing date has been set in that investigation.

“If the information given today is true, it puts their program at risk,” Thomas said about the new charges. “We have an interest in Montclair Prep as long as they (are) a member of the Southern Section.”

Tom Robb, a Montclair Prep assistant from 1982-85, and John DeRouen, one of the transfer students who played for the Mounties in 1985-86, said in recent interviews that the on-campus living arrangement was a ploy to get athletic eligibility for four transfer students from City Section schools.

Pete Lewis, Robb’s roommate in the on-campus apartment for three years, also said that the players lived on campus only until the school was cleared of charges.

Of the three other transfer students, Anthony Pack declined comment, and Alex DeHayward and Gabriel Alonzo could not be reached for comment.

The Southern Section investigated Montclair Prep in 1985, after three players from El Camino Real and one from Chatsworth transferred to the private nondenominational school in Van Nuys. Under state rules, a student automatically gains athletic eligibility when he enrolls as a boarding school student for the first time. The student-athlete must live on campus.

If the investigation showed the students not living on campus, the players would have lost their eligibility for one year and the team would have been forced to forfeit games in which they played.

Simpson, who also has denied the allegations involving the Sparks family, said the school will be exonerated.

Simpson said he regularly saw the transfer students pass his office in the fall of 1985 on their way to the second-floor apartment in the dormitory.

“I didn’t check them at night, but I saw them going up there every day,” he said. “They kept their stuff there and as far as I know they were there. I don’t remember all the details. This happened five years ago.”

The Southern Section’s investigation in 1985 was prompted by a letter from Don Thomas, an assistant principal at El Camino Real. He questioned the eligibility of DeHayward, a senior, and juniors DeRouen and Pack after the three transferred and played for the Mounties at the start of the season.

Alonzo, a senior who transferred from Chatsworth, also joined the Montclair Prep team that fall and entered the school as a boarding student along with the three El Camino Real transfers.

Don Thomas contacted the Southern Section after he investigated claims that DeHayward still lived at home in the El Camino Real attendance area.

“I drove over to his street in Woodland Hills and sat in my car a few houses away from his one morning about the second or third week of school,” Thomas said. “I saw him leaving his house with school books under his arm and he looked just like a kid going to school. And Montclair Prep said he was living in their dorms. The thing looked just as phony as it could be.”

Robb, the team’s offensive coordinator under Hazelton, lived in a two-room apartment on campus since joining Montclair Prep as a teacher and coach in 1982. Shortly thereafter, Lewis, then a 23-year-old struggling actor, moved in with Robb. The two lived there alone until the end of the 1984-85 school year when Holland Smith, a linebacker and tight end, moved in, according to Robb.

In the fall, before the Oct. 17 Southern Section investigation, the school installed four cots for the transfers, who brought along personal items to give the appearance that they lived there, according to Robb and DeRouen.

“We had to take down our own stuff from the walls and put up stuff from the players,” Robb said.

John Hazelton, a Montclair Prep assistant coach now but the team’s head coach in 1985, said he was unaware of any such arrangement.

“I’m totally in the dark and completely shocked by this,” he said. “The first I knew that the Southern Section was coming (to investigate) was the day they came out. I have no idea what arrangement the players had with the school with regard to boarding. If they fooled the Southern Section, then we were all fooled.”

Hazelton characterized the transfers as fringe players on a team loaded with more talented starters. Montclair Prep had a 10-4 record in 1985 and reached the Southern Section Inland Conference final. The team’s stars were Rich Swinton, now at Washington State, and Reggie Smith Jr., now at Idaho.

DeHayward, however, was a two-way starter at end and a first-team All-Alpha League player who was offered a scholarship by USC. Pack, a receiver and defensive back, was a second-team all-league player and later earned a scholarship to Cal State Fullerton.

DeRouen, currently a junior guard on the University of La Verne basketball team, also earned second-team all-league honors as a wide receiver. Alonzo, a nose guard, was injured in a motorcycle accident and was sidelined most of that season.

DeRouen said he doesn’t remember who asked him to move in with Robb, but claims he lived on campus less than a month. At the start of the semester, he lived with his mother in Los Angeles. After he tired of the long commute by bus, he moved in with teammate Ronald Walker, whose mother rented an apartment close to the school in Van Nuys.

Pack also lived with the Walkers, according to Walker and DeRouen.

“I don’t really remember who fixed the situation, but we stayed at school just a couple of weeks or a month and then it was OK to move back home,” DeRouen said. “I don’t know if Doc (Simpson) knew about it, but the school was so small, I think everybody knew.”

Robb, 31, who currently runs his own bodyguard company and paints portraits of athletes, acknowledges he was disappointed when he was passed over for the head coaching job when Hazelton left after the ’85 season. He added, however, that he holds the school in high regard and values his experience there. He attributes his role in the 1985 controversy to overzealousness.