Morningside Girls’ Coach Randle Is Named Coach of Hawthorne Boys’ Team

Ron Randle, who guided the Morningside High girls’ basketball team to the State Division I final last season, has been hired as the boys’ basketball coach at Hawthorne, Athletic Director Kye Courtney said Wednesday.

Randle, 36, replaces Richard Wells, who resigned to become the women’s basketball coach at Trade Tech.

“We interviewed several candidates and we decided he was the best man for the job based on his overall CIF experience,” Courtney said. “He’s been to a CIF championship game. We were looking for a guy who’s been there before.”

Before coaching the Morningside girls’ team last season, Randle was an assistant and co-coach for seven seasons with the Morningside boys’ team. During that time, the Monarchs won six league titles and the CIF-Southern Section 3-A Division title in 1985. Randle and co-coach Carl Franklin were named The Times’ South Bay Coaches of the Year in 1990.

Randle coached the Morningside girls to a 32-3 record and the Southern Section Division I-AA and state regional titles, but it was speculated he would not be rehired because the Inglewood Unified School District wanted coaches who are on-campus teachers.

Randle, who recently resigned as an accountant for the Inglewood school district, also was not pleased with a new policy calling for all coaches at Morningside and Inglewood to reapply for their jobs in a district effort to more closely monitor the academic achievement of athletes.

This, Randle said, prompted him to pursue the Hawthorne coaching job.

“There was no real reason to create havoc in a lot of different people’s lives,” he said. “It has allowed confusion and a lot of mistrust among the staff about what was being said and done. It caused a lot of good friends to be bitter with each other and to question the motives behind what the school district is doing.”

Randle said he believes the uncertainty of who will coach the Morningside girls’ team contributed to the transfer of All-American center Janet Davis to Lynwood for her senior year.

Randle, a 1973 Morningside graduate, said he is sad to be leaving a school he has been associated with for so many years, but is looking forward to a new challenge and returning to coaching boys’ basketball.

“I’m losing my family, because I consider Morningside my family,” he said. “But I’m an adventurer. Hawthorne has a solid program and I’m looking forward to putting them in the upper echelon of boys’ basketball.”