PREPS / ROB FERNAS : Carnes: Leuzinger’s Troubles Not Insurmountable

When Steve Carnes resigned as Leuzinger High’s football coach in November, he said it was because he was “tired and kind of worn out.”

A case of coaching burnout?

On the surface, it may have appeared that way. But privately Carnes made it clear that his reasons for resigning extended far beyond the football field.

Carnes talked openly this week about the problems he believes contributed to Thursday’s brawl between Leuzinger students and prompted him to resign as football coach. He remains athletic director, but said he will resign from that post at the end of the school year.

“There are a lot of people here still willing to coach, but slowly but surely they are falling by the wayside because they don’t want to be involved with all the other things, myself included,” he said. “There are things that need to be addressed. Until they are, things are not going to get any better.

“There are a lot of fantastic kids here. The district has to realize that the good kids are being affected. They have to come in and take control.”

Contrary to what has been reported in the wake of the brawl, which involved groups of black and Hispanic students, Carnes said there is not a large-scale racial problem at the ethnically diverse school of 3,000.

He said the problems stem from a small, unruly group of students and from an administration reluctant to deal with them in a firm manner. Friday, school officials suspended 25 students for a week, including two girls whose argument was blamed for setting off Thursday afternoon’s fight.

“It’s gotten too loose around this place,” Carnes said. “There are too many kids out of class wandering around. There should never be a kid out of class, anywhere. Some of these kids are not here to go to school. They’re just here looking for trouble.

“Let’s give these kids an option. Either they get in the classroom or they leave. We have about 3,000 students here, and I’d say about 2,700 are being hurt by the small percentage who don’t care about getting an education. Until we get them out of here, this place is going to have problems.

“I don’t think there is a teacher on this campus who doesn’t feel the same way. We sit around and ask ourselves, ‘Why? Why are these kids allowed back on campus.’ ”

Carnes said the adverse publicity Leuzinger has received, not only from the brawl but also from last year’s walkout of hundreds of students in protest of alleged racial discrimination in the district, has affected him greatly. Once proud to be a teacher and coach at Leuzinger, Carnes, who guided the football team to its only CIF-Southern Section title in 1985, said he has thought about leaving the Lawndale school.

Carnes, 41, one of the South Bay’s most respected and well-liked coaches, grew up in Lawndale, attended Lawndale High, where he played on the school’s 1966 Southern Section 2-A Division championship football team, and has taught in the Centinela Valley Union High School District since the 1970s. He coached the Leuzinger football team from 1984-90, during which time the Olympians had a 56-22-6 record, including 8-6 in the playoffs, and won three league titles.

“I’m bitter because I’m relatively young,” he said. “I have a good 20 more years of teaching and coaching in me, and I’m not sure what the future holds for me. I’m bitter that I have feelings to leave. I’ve spent my entire life in this area, but I’ll never coach again in this situation.”

Carnes said the disharmony within the district, pitting teachers and the school board against administrators and their supporters in a war sometimes waged along racial lines, has discouraged many of the most qualified coaches at Leuzinger from getting involved in athletics.

He said the list includes Fred Boehm, the former head football coach at Hawthorne and Lawndale; Art Linden, the former Leuzinger football coach, and Bob Martin, the former Leuzinger basketball coach. All are Leuzinger faculty members who are not presently coaching.

“They all reached a point in their lives where they didn’t want to coach anymore,” Carnes said. “All these things make it so they don’t want to be a part of it. We have a lot of good people that should be involved in coaching, but they are not.”

Carnes, frustrated at the way Leuzinger was being run, said he decided in August that the 1990 football season would be his last as coach.

“It forced me out,” he said. “I’m burned out because of all the stuff I had to deal with. It was never football. Football has been my life. I was burned out on this situation with all the problems.”

The solution, Carnes said, lies in all parties involved--teachers, administrators, board members and district officials--working together to once again make Leuzinger a safe, reputable school that emphasizes education of the young over petty differences between adults.

“I think we have the capability in this district of really attacking this problem,” he said. “There are good people here, hard-working people dealing with a difficult situation every day. As a faculty, an administration and a district, we have to come together. We can’t be one faction. As teachers, we can’t close our doors and let the security people handle things.

“We can’t close our doors anymore.”

Carnes said the brawl prompted Leuzinger to cancel, suspend or move all of its scheduled home athletic events Thursday and Friday.

The baseball team’s home game Thursday against Santa Monica was changed to Friday at Santa Monica. The boys’ volleyball team, which was scheduled to play host to Culver City on Thursday, will not make up the match unless it has a bearing on the Bay League race.

Carnes said Leuzinger was able to get buses into school Thursday to take the track team and softball team to their scheduled events in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, respectively. But the freshmen-sophomore baseball team was forced to forfeit its game at Santa Monica.

“I stood out there (Thursday) and I saw the disappointment on the faces of the frosh-soph baseball team,” Carnes said. “It broke my heart to see them so down because they couldn’t play their baseball game.

“That’s what I mean about great kids being affected by what is going on at this school. They were looking forward to playing their game. It’s just not right.”

Banning baseball Coach Syl Saavedra calls it the “Mike and Mark Show,” and opponents in the Southern Pacific Conference must be getting tired of tuning in.

Led by its two outstanding pitchers, Mike Busby and Mark Chavez, Banning leads the conference with an 11-0 record. Busby pitched a no-hitter against Washington two weeks ago, and Wednesday Chavez pitched a no-hitter in a 7-0 victory over Dorsey.

For the season, Busby is 6-0 with an 0.58 earned-run average and 65 strikeouts and 20 walks in 48 innings pitched. Chavez is 5-1 with a 1.08 ERA and 52 strikeouts and 11 walks in 45 innings. Both are senior right-handers.

Saavedra said the two will take turns starting Banning’s games the rest of the season as the Pilots head into the home stretch of league play.

Their goal: To become the first Banning team to go undefeated in league.

“It gives us a little more motivation,” said Saavedra, whose team is 13-4 overall and plays Gardena twice next week. “The kids are talking about it. They want to go undefeated. It gives them something to shoot for.”

Busby, aside from his exceptional pitching, has been tearing up the league at the plate. He is batting .400 in conference games, second-best on the team, with two home runs, four doubles and 13 runs batted in.

Rolling Hills extended its lead in the Ocean League baseball race Friday by defeating host Redondo, 9-4, to complete a two-game sweep over the Sea Hawks.

The Titans improved to 7-0-1 in league play heading into a two-game series against second-place Mira Costa (4-2). The teams will meet Tuesday at Mira Costa and Thursday at Rolling Hills.

Rolling Hills won Friday’s game despite committing a season-high nine errors. First baseman Stefan Walhstrom helped the Titans overcome their defensive blunders by collecting two hits, including his sixth home run, and driving in three runs.

Mira Costa, meanwhile, lost its second nonleague game of the week to South Torrance, 4-2, Friday.

Revenge was sweet, but the circumstances surrounding Hawthorne’s 78-49 Bay League track victory Thursday over visiting Beverly Hills left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Cougar faithful.

Hawthorne found out that its standout sprinter, Erik Allen, will be out of action indefinitely after he apparently strained a hamstring muscle running in a relay April 13 at the Arcadia Invitational.

Allen, who has run 21.3 seconds in the 200 meters this season, missed last season with hamstring injuries to both legs. Allen was supposed to add the 100 to his events Thursday, but was unable to compete.

The victory avenged last year’s league loss to Beverly Hills, which snapped Hawthorne’s 53-meet winning streak.