Area Schools Find Goodwill in Competition Despite Qualms : Watts Games: Post-riot fears dissolve and teams discover that brotherhood and sportsmanship prevail.

The violence, looting and burning that took place during the recent riots in Los Angeles will not soon be forgotten by those who witnessed them.

Yet the popularity of the L. A. Watts Summer Games, which began in 1968--three years after the Watts riots--to bring athletes of different ethnic backgrounds together through sports, does not appear to have suffered much in the wake of the disturbances.

The number of participants has remained high this year, and the worries about retaliatory violence directed against teams from Ventura County, where the jurors in the Rodney G. King beating trial reside, have not materialized.

Royal High had indicated that it would not send any teams to the Watts Games because administrators at the school believed that participating would place the school’s coaches, athletes, and their parents at risk.

Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks were not expected to send any teams either, although administrators from those schools said that their decisions were based on reasons unrelated to the riots.

As it turned out, the Royal High softball team and the Thousand Oaks boys’ volleyball team did take part in the Watts Games.

Royal ended up in the softball tournament because of miscommunication, according to Coach Frank Maye.

Maye, who just completed his first season as the Highlanders’ coach, formed a team called the Ventura Comets to play in American Softball Assn. tournaments this summer. He entered the Comets in the Watts Games, unaware that only high school teams were allowed to play.

When the team arrived at Peninsula High to play Lincoln in a first-round game, he and tournament officials realized his mistake, but because all of the players on the team attend Royal, the team was allowed to play Lincoln.

The newly named Highlanders defeated the Tigers, 11-1, and followed that with an 11-8 win over Torrance. They were supposed to play San Pedro in a quarterfinal game Saturday, but will forfeit because of a prior commitment to play in an ASA tournament in Granada Hills.

“I’m to blame,” Maye said. “I thought the Watts Games were just a weekend tournament. I did not intentionally disobey the directive sent out by our principal. . . . It was just a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.”

Maye added that his team had no problems on or off the field.

“The girls had a great time,” Maye said. “We played Lincoln, and the two teams got along fine.”

Dale Ackerman, athletic director at Thousand Oaks High, said this month that no Lancer teams would participate in the Watts Games because of scheduling conflicts, but James Park was eager to have his team compete in the boys’ volleyball tournament, which they won with a 15-13 victory over Marshall on Sunday.

“I realize (the riots were) a really horrendous thing,” said Park, a Korean-American and a 1982 graduate of Belmont High. “But you have to move on. You can’t change the past, but you can try to make the future better by interacting with other people from different backgrounds.”

Park particularly enjoyed the Watts Games because of the ethnic diversity of the teams.

“We don’t play City (Section) teams during the regular season, so it’s neat for the kids to play against them here,” Park said. “I don’t think they had ever seen that many Asian kids at a tournament before. It was a great experience.”

Park said that Ackerman and some players’ parents expressed concerns about competing, but Park explained to them that the volleyball tournament was being held at North Torrance High, and that, “it was unfair to blame everyone in the city for what happened.”

Glen Hannah and Mike Prewitt, the boys’ basketball coaches at Buena and Camarillo highs, also had safety concerns, but their teams took part in the tournament. Hannah, whose team lost to Granada Hills in a first-round game at Banning High, said Buena might not have played had its first-round game been in the inner city. “We waited to see where we were playing before we made a decision,” Hannah said. “That was a concern among parents.”

Camarillo lost to St. Anthony in a second-round game at Dorsey on Saturday, but Prewitt said he had no intention of not playing because of the location. He taught from 1978-80 at Audubon Junior High, a feeder school for Crenshaw and Dorsey highs.

“The intent of the games is neat,” Prewitt said. “To get kids of different backgrounds to interact on the court is admirable.”

Mike Herrington, the Hart football coach, and Sandy Greentree, the Chatsworth basketball coach, said they never considered pulling out of the games.

“That was never an issue,” Herrington said. “We always tell our kids that any time you go to the city, you have to be careful. But we weren’t any more concerned this year than in previous years.”

Greentree said that pulling out of the Watts Games would have been a slap in the face to some of his players, who are bused to Chatsworth from the inner city.

“I didn’t think twice about (going),” Greentree said. “It would have been contradictory to not go. Some of our players live there. By not going, we would have been saying, ‘I don’t like the neighborhood you live in.’ I don’t think that would have washed with the team.”