Sunset Teams Will Feel Pinch : Budgets: Huntington Beach Union District approves cuts, which will eliminate stipends for several coaching positions. Six of the seven schools in league will be affected.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Parents might have to pay for more than tickets to watch their children participate in Sunset League athletics next fall.

The Huntington Beach Union School District board of trustees has approved a proposal by athletic directors from the district’s six high schools to eliminate coaching stipends for sophomore football, co-ed badminton and freshman-sophomore baseball.

Also eliminated were stipends for the assistant sophomore football coach and the assistant boys’ and girls’ swimming coaches.

“We may be dodging the issue here and we may be watering down the programs,” said Bill Boswell, the district athletic director, “but at least the (varsity) programs will still be there for the students.

“Our current attitude is to not deprive an entire sport. The athletic directors are trying to hold onto the programs as much as possible.”

The board approved $48,600 in athletic cuts in April as part of a $2.6-million decrease in in the 1991-92 budget. But the board allowed the districts’ athletic directors to decide how the cuts would be made.

The reductions will affect Ocean View, Huntington Beach, Edison, Marina, Fountain Valley and Westminster high schools.

Santa Ana High School, the only member of the Sunset League not in the Huntington Beach Union School District, also is feeling the budget crunch. The Santa Ana Unified District board of trustees approved $400,000 in junior and senior high school athletic budget cuts May 14 as part of $13.2 million in district-wide reductions.

Bruce Belcher, an assistant football coach and girls’ athletic director at Edison High School, said each school has the option of paying the stipend through private donations. If funds can’t be found, the programs’ futures could be in jeopardy.

“And we’ll have to go through these cuts again next year,” Belcher said. “We’re at the bare bones right now.”

Boswell said the district is facing a $2.5-million budget cut for the 1992-93 school year.

Belcher said Edison hopes to save its sophomore football program with donations from boosters. The Charger sophomore team has lost only two games in the past five years and has won five consecutive Sunset League titles.

Belcher said the district athletic directors considered several options, including across-the-board pay cuts for coaches and decreasing the monetary units for some programs.

“We had a number of ideas (about) what to do with it, but our hands were tied,” Belcher said. “Some of the things, like the (monetary) units, were negotiated with the district, and we couldn’t do a thing.”

Belcher said he fears the district, which has suffered from decreasing enrollment, could lose more students if it starts cutting athletic programs.

“If we totally eliminate a program, we lose kids,” he said. “The Estancia, Newport and Long Beach Wilson districts aren’t that far away. Parents who want their kids in co-curricular activities will transfer them out of our district.”

“We have reached a point in district where we have to decide if it will force kids out of here. In the long run, we could lose money that way.”