Arrests of Athletes Send Shock Waves Through Campus at Antelope Valley : Jurisprudence: Officials at the junior college jolted by charges of rape and burglary involving six of the school’s football players in two incidents.

Antelope Valley College has tried hard to set an example.

It was one of the first colleges in California to order mandatory drug testing for all student-athletes several years ago. It has a full-time faculty member whose sole job is to help student-athletes with academic problems, a position that many larger institutions, including Cal State Northridge, do not have.

The school has long prided itself on running a tight athletic ship.

“We have a very disciplined sports program,” college President Allan Kurki said.

Wednesday, three members of Antelope Valley College’s 1991 football team went on trial on charges they raped a 14-year-old girl.

Later this year, three other Antelope Valley College football players face trial on burglary charges. Sheriff’s deputies said the three smashed in a window of a sporting goods store and were hauling away assorted items when an alarm scared them away.

The alleged break-in occurred April 30, the night after the verdict in the Rodney G. King beating case and at the peak of the rioting and looting in Los Angeles.

Although no verdict has been rendered in either case, the arrests have cut deeply into the flesh of the community college.

“Both incidents are very painful for me,” Kurki said. “A big part of my job is public relations. This is a tough one. And more importantly, I know how serious we are about discipline on this campus. It’s not something we take lightly. When you have this disciplined attitude and then have problems . . . this hurts us badly.”

In the more serious case, players David Brown, 20, Bradley Cole, 21, and Gene Washington, 23, are charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in the alleged incident involving a 14-year-old girl at an apartment shared by Brown and Cole early in the morning of Oct. 5, 1991.

The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in state prison, but Deputy District Attorney Chesley McKay said he would not seek state prison time for the three.

Because they have no criminal record, he would recommend they spend a year in county jail if convicted, McKay said.

Brown and Cole, wide receivers on the 1990 and 1991 team, are from Florida. Washington, who also played those two seasons, is a running back from Chatsworth who was a standout at Chatsworth High.

In the second case, Selves Smith, 19, of Lancaster, and David Nelson and John Sokalski, both 20 and from Quartz Hill, are charged with burglarizing a Lancaster sporting goods store.

The three were star players on the 1990 Quartz Hill High team that made it to the Southern Section Division I championship game.

Sokalski was arrested a second time shortly after his original arrest. He is suspected, according to sheriff’s deputies, of burglarizing two other Antelope Valley businesses in April.

Smith was The Times’ Valley lineman of the year in 1990 when he played linebacker and fullback at Quartz Hill. Nelson scored 12 touchdowns as a running back and Sokalski, a defensive back, had four interceptions.

Although none of the three have played for Antelope Valley, all three are enrolled at the school, were participating with the team in spring practice and were virtually assured of roster spots on the 1992 team, according to Brent Carder, football coach and athletic director.

For Carder, too, the incidents have stung badly.

“For anybody in education, when something bad happens to one of your students--whether it’s something that happens to them or it’s something they do to somebody else--you agonize over that,” Carder said. “It’s magnified with a coach because of the closeness, the amount of time you spend together. Their disappointments become your disappointments. Their mistakes become your mistakes.

“It’s almost like having something happen to your own kids. You feel bad about it. You agonize over it.”

Athletes in trouble with the law has become a common story. From the University of Oklahoma football scandal in the mid-1980s in which numerous players were charged with sexual attacks and the illegal use of handguns to the conviction on rape charges this year of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, the trend has been loud and clear.

“It is a national concern,” Kurki said.

Carder said it is a problem far bigger than college athletics.

“Especially in the community colleges, we reflect what is going on in our society,” he said. “Our students are the average people out there. You read about the increase in crime in our society and my suspicion is that the rate of increase in society is the same as the rate of increase in crime in athletics. It is a reflection.”

Joe Gerda, athletic director at College of the Canyons, a community college in Valencia, agreed.

“And changes we’ve seen in our students over the years are probably the same changes we’ve seen in society,” Gerda said. “Our students are our society.”

Schools such as Antelope Valley, Carder and Kurki said, are founded on the philosophy of giving everybody a chance at a college education.

It is not the same philosophy held by private colleges and four-year schools.

“They are able to be very selective in their admission criteria,” Kurki said. “And by doing so, they eliminate many of these problems.”

Antelope Valley--with a student population of about 11,000--is sticking to its open-door policy.

Carder said Smith, Nelson and Sokalski--the three freshmen charged with burglary--are welcome to try out for the team in August if they are enrolled in the college.

Brown, Cole and Washington completed their two-year eligibility last fall.

“If we operate under the assumption that people cannot change and you cannot change a person’s behavior, then why have schools at all?” Carder said.

“Education causes learning. Who is to say that the mistakes somebody makes early in their life can’t be an important part of causing a positive change.

“And as much as these incidents hurt, athletics remain a great vehicle to cause some positive change in a person’s life.”

Gerda said he hopes the incidents involving the Antelope Valley College players don’t become the basis for sweeping generalizations about athletics.

“There is a natural tendency,” he said, “when one politician gets arrested for people to say, ‘That’s politics.’

“When any institution gets singled out with these problems, people tend to generalize on that too. And that’s too bad, because athletes tend to be very positive people.”