Life After Leuzinger Has Been Good to Childs : Preps: The senior says transferring to Inglewood helped improve his academic performance and his chances of earning a football scholarship.

Leandrew Childs still reminisces about the good times and friendships he had at Leuzinger High.

“I always had someone to associate with,” he said.

But Childs, who wants to play college football, has no regrets about transferring last year to Inglewood.

It was a welcome change. Not only for football, he says, but for academics, which was never high on his list of priorities at Leuzinger.

“Most of it was my fault,” Childs said. “After football season, I wouldn’t come to school. I would just go to a friend’s house and hang out. I had to transfer to a new environment where I could raise my grades and get away from most of my old friends.”

The move has paid dividends for Childs.

The 5-foot-8, 175-pound senior was an All-Bay League first-team selection and a Times’ South Bay second-team choice at quarterback after passing for 679 yards and rushing for 865 yards and 11 touchdowns.

Childs, who is attending night school at Inglewood twice a week to make up for lost credits during his freshman and sophomore years at Leuzinger, has been contacted by Hawaii, Fresno State and Texas Christian about continuing his football career.

In the meantime, Childs has discovered another diversion: basketball.

Childs, a point guard, is averaging 9.4 assists to help Inglewood (11-8), which is seeking its first league title since 1983, to a 3-0 record in Bay League play.

“All I have time for now is school and basketball, nothing else really until the weekend,” Childs said. “Football is my ticket to college, but basketball gave me something to do to keep me out of trouble. My grades are better and everything is cool now.”

The same could not be said of his relationship with basketball Coach Patrick Roy, who hesitated to give Childs an opportunity to try out for the team.

“I’ve seen him around campus and knew he was a football star. . . . I told him to wait a week or two,” Roy said. “But we were in desperate need for a point guard so I said, ‘Let me go back and talk to this kid.’ ”

They talked, but Childs, who was given a two-week tryout, did not play at first.

By the third game, he had earned a starting job. He was recently named team captain.

“He played in one game and he took the pressure real well,” said Roy, a first-year coach who played at Inglewood from 1981-84. “The next game, I increased his time and he clearly outplayed the point guard we had. He gave us the spark we needed.”

Childs’ transfer sparked controversy when he enrolled at Inglewood. Financial burdens forced his family to move from their Hawthorne apartment.

At first, Childs stayed with his older brother in Compton. He attended Inglewood on a permit for several months before moving in with his mother, brother and sister in a one-bedroom home in Inglewood.

His mother works part-time to support the family while attending school to earn a high school diploma. Childs has not seen or heard from his father in 15 years.

“My mother couldn’t afford it without me working, so we had to move elsewhere,” Childs said. “I had to go through a lot moving from Hawthorne.”

Steve Carnes, athletic director and football coach at Leuzinger, suspected that someone at Inglewood had persuaded Childs to transfer.

The Southern Section investigated, and although no wrongdoing was found with Childs’ transfer, the Inglewood football program was placed on probation. The Sentinels were found to have played three academically ineligible transfers, including two from Leuzinger, during the 1991 season.

Childs had led Leuzinger in rushing with 545 yards and averaged 11.6 yards a carry as a junior.

“People said ‘He just came here to play football,’ but that wasn’t true,” Childs said. “I was in the office talking to people every day about stupid stuff. ‘Why did I want to leave? Why am I here? Where do I stay?’ I didn’t really understand.”

Childs recently scored 930 on the Scholastic Aptitude test, exceeding the NCAA-required 700 score to play as a freshman at a Division I university.

“At Leuzinger, you couldn’t really talk to anybody there,” Childs said. “Your problems were your problems. At Inglewood, the coaches encourage you to talk to tell them what’s on your mind. That’s the biggest difference.”

Since Childs joined the basketball team, the Sentinels have won nine of 13 games. Inglewood will play at Morningside in a nonleague game tonight.

“Leandrew’s doing all right,” Sentinel center Ralph Shelton said. “Everybody was surprised when he came out, but he started looking real good. He’s kind of quiet and keeps to himself. He doesn’t hang around with many people on the team.”

Childs, though, wouldn’t have it any other way.