State Would Have Considered Garfield

Carlo Prandini, director of the California high school cross-country meet, said Monday that he would have considered the entry of the Garfield High boys’ team into the state meet if he had been informed of a scoring error by City Section officials.

The error, in the City championships Nov. 17 at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, had placed Garfield third in the standings. Only the top two teams advanced to the state meet in Fresno Nov. 24.

It was discovered on Nov. 20, four days before the state meet, that Garfield had finished second, but no action was taken to correct the error or inform the schools involved.

“I didn’t hear anything about it,” Prandini said.

Prandini added that although no team changes were made, changes in individual entries were made the day of the meet this year.

At the City meet, Garfield was announced as having run third, with 117 points, and Woodland Hills Taft as second with 115 behind Belmont.

Three days later, City Commissioner Hal Harkness learned that Garfield and Taft had tied for second with 107 points and that Garfield should have been second on the basis of a higher-placing sixth runner.

Harkness said he was powerless to take action because of National Federation of State High Schools Assns. rules that prohibit changes in results 48 hours after competition, and because state meet entries were required to be declared by the evening of Nov. 17.

Prandini said that the Nov. 17 deadline for entries was primarily for the production of the meet program.

“I was heartbroken when I found out,” Harkness said of the error. “We screwed it up and it was done, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I never considered changing it. I didn’t feel it fair to either school. That was a value judgment, but I weighed both sides. . . . Taft believed it was going and Garfield was not emotionally prepared.”