If Sports Builds Character, Let’s Show It

Vince Brown was angry. He didn’t think Friday’s game between his Tustin baseball team and Saddleback should have been postponed. Not with the Sea View League championship on the line. Not when the threat of violence seemed so slim.

Friday morning, the Santa Ana Unified School District recommended that its schools postpone most extracurricular activities. With the riots in Los Angeles raging only 30 miles away, the school district wasn’t taking chances. Not with rumors of spreading violence swirling through the streets.

Principals at Saddleback, Santa Ana and Santa Ana Valley high schools decided to follow the district’s recommendation, though Saddleback would still go ahead with its prom Friday evening at a Newport Beach hotel. Century opted to play out its schedule.

When he heard that his team’s showdown with Saddleback had to be rescheduled for Monday, Brown was irritated. Sure, he said, keeping kids safe is all-important. But how was an afternoon baseball game in Tustin any more dangerous than a dinner dance in Newport Beach?

“We were led to believe one of the reasons Saddleback canceled was liability,” Brown said. “But they’re still having their prom. It seems very convenient to cancel a sporting event but not the prom.”

Besides, Brown said, this wasn’t just any game. Tustin was first in the Sea View League standings; Saddleback was second. High-stakes baseball, ready to roll.

“I’m angry,” Brown said. “I feel like Saddleback found an excuse for the kids not to play athletics so the kids could go home and get ready for the prom. Saddleback was very selective on what they canceled.”

Not true, Saddleback Coach Bob Mangram says. The Roadrunners were ready and excited to play. After Principal Robert Nelson informed Mangram that the game was off, Mangram was angry as well.

“I threw my pencil and paper down, chucked a few things around the room and went out and raked,” Mangram said. “I didn’t agree with the decision, but I accepted it.”

Good thing. Wouldn’t want to think everybody had lost perspective.

This baseball game wasn’t canceled. It was put off a few days because a few responsible adults decided to take what measures they could to eliminate what might have been a very real risk.

The melee in L.A. wasn’t happening only on television. It was just across the county line; for most of us, perhaps, only a 30- or 40-minute drive away. The images--of raging fires and senseless death, of society gone berserk--will remain in our memories for a long time.

Several area athletes said they spent much of Thursday and Friday class time discussing the nightmare coming to life in the county next door. It didn’t seem to matter what the class subject was. From algebra to biology, the talk was of riots and racism and Rodney King.

“We talked about it all during calculus,” said Laguna Beach football, volleyball and basketball player Eric Fegraus. “We did a lot of comparing. You know, what our life is like in Laguna, how sheltered we are, compared to kids in South Central L.A.”

Said Esperanza running back Marcus Tayui: “It’s funny, because I’d listen to gangsta rap groups and say, ‘It can’t be that bad in L.A. It can’t be that bad in the ghetto.’ But now I see it is.”

“Straight Outta Compton” . . . straight out of Orange County. Certainly it’s not the same sound. But Tayui, a member of Esperanza’s International Club, which works to eliminate racial tensions through understanding, says he’s willing to do what he can--clothes drive, food drive, whatever--to help those left homeless or jobless by the riots.

If athletics is supposed to teach kids anything, we’re told, it’s poise and sportsmanship, especially under adversity. That’s what coaches like to preach. Sports builds character, they say. Makes for a better individual, and so on.

Perhaps, then, the current situation might allow them to show it.

A swim-a-thon? Jog-a-thon? Home run-a-thon? A T-shirt drive? It might be a small boost, perhaps only symbolic, but Orange County coaches and athletes have the opportunity now to lend a well-to-do hand to those who really need it.

UCLA freshman Mike Terry, a former track standout at El Modena High, witnessed some of the destruction from the window of his friend’s Westwood apartment Thursday night.

“We could see flames from the buildings,” he said. “It was scary . . . Helpless is a good word to describe it.”

Terry helped put together a food drive in his dorm, donating what he could. A couple of boxes of instant soup, a carton of graham crackers, some soda and popcorn . . .

“Not anything, really,” Terry said.

But something, at least.