A Talented Football Coach or a Good Recruiter? : Preps: Angelo Jackson turned around Inglewood’s program in 1991, but the Sentinels were recently placed on probation by the Southern Section.

When Angelo Jackson was named Inglewood High’s football coach last summer, many believed it was only a matter of time before the Sentinels evolved from perennial losers to championship contenders.

The school district news release announcing Jackson’s hiring carried the headline, “New Coach Brings Inglewood High School Football To Life.” This was after the Sentinels were 1-8-1 in 1990.

Jackson lived up to the expectations, guiding Inglewood to a 5-5 record, its best finish in several seasons.

Instead of a pat on the back, though, Jackson and the Inglewood football program were slapped on the hand last month by the Southern Section, which placed the Sentinels on probation for playing three academically ineligible transfers last season--two from Leuzinger and one from Hawthorne.

Suddenly Jackson was no longer the toast of the town. He was in the hot seat.

And things don’t appear to be cooling down. Despite the leniency of the Southern Section’s punishment--some coaches believe Inglewood deserved a more severe penalty than probation--Jackson has been accused of orchestrating the recruitment of athletes from other schools.

Erik Donnelly, a two-time All-Bay League lineman for Leuzinger, said he was contacted two or three times last summer by Inglewood equipment manager Rico Perez in an effort to get Donnelly to transfer to Inglewood. Perez, a former Leuzinger employee who also worked as a security guard, is no longer affiliated with Inglewood’s football program.

“Rico kept telling me to go (to Inglewood) because I could get a scholarship,” Donnelly said. “He said that (Jackson) had some good connections with colleges.

“Rico said that Angelo wanted me to come up and meet him.”

Donnelly said Perez made the same pitch to other Leuzinger players, some of whom took him up on the invitation.

Jackson denies instructing Perez to recruit Leuzinger players. The popular belief at Inglewood is that Perez was an overzealous employee who used his ties to Leuzinger in a misguided attempt to improve Inglewood’s team.

“There was a lot of stuff that went on that we weren’t aware of,” Jackson said.

Perez could not be reached for comment.

But others contend that Jackson knows more than he is willing to acknowledge.

St. Monica football Coach Norm Lacy said he believes that Jackson used undue influence to persuade two St. Monica players, linebacker Louie Reza and offensive tackle Jerrick Hayes, to transfer to Inglewood last fall. Jackson coached at St. Monica for four seasons, the last three as head coach, before coming to Inglewood.

Running back Na’il Benjamin also followed Jackson from St. Monica to Inglewood, but Lacy did not contest that transfer. Benjamin, who will attend California in the fall, led Inglewood last season with 925 yards rushing and 22 touchdowns.

Losing Benjamin, Reza and Hayes proved devastating for St. Monica, which was 0-9-1 with an 18-player team that included seven sophomores. The Mariners were later awarded a victory by forfeit.

“Those three players should have come back as seniors, but it just so happened they all transferred to Inglewood,” Lacy said.

Jackson denies he recruited any players and said that Benjamin, Hayes and Reza were already enrolled at Inglewood before he began coaching the team.

“Everything was legal,” Jackson said. “We did nothing wrong.”

Lacy raised the issue of undue influence with the Southern Section, but he was reprimanded during a meeting at the section office in Cerritos because he had contacted Hayes after the player enrolled at Inglewood. With Lacy put on the defensive by his violation of Southern Section rules, neither St. Monica nor Inglewood decided to press charges against the other and the matter was dropped.

But it did not change Lacy’s opinion of Jackson.

“My problem with Angelo is that he tries to philosophize that what he’s doing is the best for the kids, when in fact he’s prostituting the system,” Lacy said. “There are rules that we have to play by. If we don’t abide by them, then there is lawlessness in the system.”

Lacy, who was an assistant for 13 years at Santa Monica High before taking over the St. Monica program last season, said Jackson tried to recruit two Santa Monica players for St. Monica. The players chose to remain at Santa Monica, Lacy said.

Although Jackson’s St. Monica teams were successful--the Mariners went from 2-8 to 9-2 in 1988 during his first season in charge--the 34-year-old coach was not well-known in the South Bay before coming to Inglewood.

That quickly changed after the Sentinels opened the 1991 season by winning four of six games. They slipped to 4-5 after losing their first three games in the competitive Bay League, but the team finished impressively with a 29-27 upset over Peninsula.

“I think Angelo did a great job,” said Hollis Dillon, the director of special services for the Inglewood Unified School District. “Angelo is at a disadvantage as a walk-on coach. He’s not at school all the time. But the kind of enthusiasm he brought to the school and the manner in which he projected himself was good for the kids.

“The decorum on campus was better because the kids felt better about themselves.”

Nearly everyone at Inglewood considers Jackson an exemplary role model for young men. A self-described family man and devout Christian, he has built a reputation for getting close to his athletes and doing as much as he can to help them on the field and away from football.

He has been successful in helping many of his players gain scholarships to four-year colleges. Besides Benjamin and Hayes, who will attend Fresno State in the fall, players from last season’s Inglewood team heading to colleges include quarterback Tindsley Trawick (Hawaii), lineman Jerrett Guest (Naval Academy), running back Damone Colston (Fresno State) and tight end Lamont Davis (Langston University).

“I think he is a tremendous coach,” said Rick Amadio, who was Inglewood’s athletic director before being released of his duties last week. “He gets along very well with the kids. He goes above and beyond the call of being a coach. He’s like a surrogate father to a lot of those kids.”

Gene Popko, a longtime teacher and volleyball coach at Inglewood, said Jackson is the best thing to happen to the Sentinel football program in years.

“He gives his whole life to the kids,” Popko said.

But even colleagues who respect Jackson as a coach seem to have questions concerning his reputation as a recruiter.

“I know he is a hard worker and a good recruiter from what everybody has told me,” Morningside football Coach Ron Tatum said.

Tatum, though, said he has never witnessed Jackson or any member of the Inglewood staff recruiting athletes in Morningside’s district, on the east side of Inglewood.

“I don’t see Angelo Jackson at Monroe Junior High School recruiting,” Tatum said. “I don’t see him on our side of town.”

Crenshaw football Coach Robert Garrett also said he has no problem with Jackson, despite the fact that several football players from Audubon Junior High in the Crenshaw district chose to attend St. Monica after Jackson began coaching there. One of the players was Benjamin, Garrett said.

Jackson is the athletic director at the Crenshaw YMCA and at another YMCA on 28th Street in South Los Angeles, near Jefferson High.

“I can name four or five youngsters from my district who went to St. Monica when (Jackson) was over there,” said Garrett, who guided Crenshaw to the City Section 3-A Division title last season. “In some sense, those kids were recruited.”

Garrett said he has discussed the situation with Jackson.

“We’ve talked about it, but we don’t bicker about it,” he said. “We’re men. We talk it out. I can’t miss something I never had. He’s going about it the best he can. I don’t think he demands that a kid come (to where he is coaching).”

Garrett said if you fault Jackson for attracting athletes, then you should fault many of the area’s finest football programs as well. He cited the cases of quarterbacks Perry Klein, who transferred from Palisades to Carson in 1988; John Walsh, who transferred from West Torrance to Carson in 1990, and Anthony Nicholson, who transferred from Centennial to Banning in 1990.

Garrett’s point is that those players didn’t show up at those schools. Someone talked them into transferring.

“It goes on everywhere,” he said.

Many times, though, coaches who lose athletes fight back.

Steve Carnes, the athletic director and football coach at Leuzinger, decided to take action after running back LeAndrew Childs transferred to Inglewood after last season. Childs led the Olympians in rushing as a junior with 545 yards and four touchdowns. He averaged an impressive 11.6 yards per carry.

A resident of Compton, Childs now attends Inglewood on permit.

“He said he was transferring because he wanted to improve his grades and get a scholarship,” Carnes said. “We can’t afford to lose players like that.”

Carnes suspected that someone at Inglewood had persuaded Childs to leave Leuzinger. His suspicions were strengthened by the knowledge that two former Leuzinger players--Antrero Fuller and Willie Sargent--played football for Inglewood last season although they were academically ineligible. Moreover, Fuller was a fifth-year senior.

Inglewood eventually was placed on probation for playing Fuller, Sargent and Lester Church, a transfer from Hawthorne who was academically ineligible and was found to have enrolled at Inglewood with a forged transcript.

After Childs’ transfer, Carnes wrote a letter to Bay League President Chris Bowles, a vice principal at Peninsula High, accusing Inglewood of illegal recruiting and playing ineligible athletes. Courtney, the Hawthorne athletic director, also sent a letter to Bowles, accusing Inglewood of playing an ineligible athlete.

Several months and two hearings later, Inglewood was placed on probation. Carnes said he wanted the matter to be settled within the Bay League, but it escalated after Inglewood Principal Ken Crowe requested that Southern Section officials look into the situation in order to prove Inglewood’s innocence.

As it turned out, several irregularities were found in Inglewood’s process for granting athletic eligibility.

“We didn’t want it to go any further than the league,” Carnes said. “We just wanted to let them know that they can’t do this kind of stuff.”

Jackson, whose program will be watched closely by the Southern Section for the next several months, said the eligibility problems were caused by a lack of communication between the administrative and athletic staffs at Inglewood.

“We’re going to clean it up and it’s not ever going to happen again,” he said. “If it does, I will resign.”