A Matter of Choice : High School Coaches Are Discovering They Can’t Always Get the Players They Want

Mark Holman earned 10 letters in three years at Orange High School. He was the Century League’s athlete of the year in 1986 and has been an assistant basketball and track coach since graduating.

So it really steams him when he tells this story:

“I asked this kid one time if he would come out for the basketball team. He said, ‘All I do is skate. I don’t play basketball.’ He was at least 6 foot 6, and we needed the height, and all he wanted to do was ride his skateboard.

“I’ll try to push some kids more than once, but the way he looked at me--it was very direct. I said, ‘If you ever change your mind, you know where to find us.’ He didn’t seem the least bit interested. It was just, ‘No, I just skate. End of story. Don’t bother me anymore.’

“Here’s this kid blessed with all this physical talent. Unfortunately, too many kids waste their talents for whatever reasons. Drugs. Gangs. They’ve got to work. That’s the one I always get. That’s the one that frustrates me the most.”

There are enough distractions at a high school to keep nearly anyone off the playing field, including some of its best athletes. Grades take their toll, but other obstacles also loom:

Like having to work to raise a family. Or to buy a car.

Like being interested in surfing. Or skating.

Like specializing in one sport to gain a scholarship. Or being pressured by a coach to compete in only his. Or not being allowed to participate because your mom is worried about the risks.

It’s all part of Life 101 on a campus near you. There are athletes out there coaches are dying to have on their team. And it isn’t going to happen.

Howard Isom resigned after four years as football coach at Ocean View because he had so much trouble getting athletes to come out for his program. The Seahawks were 13-27-1 under his direction, losing 19 of their last 20 games.

He thinks attitudes have changed.

“This is my perception, but there’s not the love of sports as much,” Isom said. “It’s ‘What can sports do for me? Can it get me a scholarship? Can it get me into the pros?’ I’ve run into a number of kids who feel if they’re not in a winning program, they can’t get a scholarship.

“In Orange County, there are a lot of other outside interests, and kids aren’t as interested in the effort it takes to be a good athlete. I think coaches, to maintain good programs, have gone to year-round programs, and that has lent itself to one-sport players and doesn’t allow an athlete time to be a kid.”

There is also a different kind of competition, too. Among coaches. And club programs. Specialization is the “in” thing. And the club programs, with a family’s personal investment backing them, are comfortable making demands on their players.

“You always lose kids,” Marina track Coach Dick Degen said, “but this club stuff is just killing some of the other sports.”

Eric Tweit, Newport Harbor’s athletic director and track coach, said his programs have been fortunate, and coaches freely share athletes: “If he’s a football player, we don’t want him just weightlifting in the spring. We want him competing in another sport.”

It’s not the great athletes who don’t come out that hurt programs, Isom said. “The ones coaches really make a living on in football are the marginal players,” he said. “Every school doesn’t have the real blue chip athlete all the time, but it’s the marginal players, the ones who are real good high school athletes with some potential to play at some level in college, either Division II or III. Those are the types of kids you need. The kids who are athletes.”

THE SPECIALIST

Newport Harbor’s Geoff Abrams, 14, is only a freshman, but already he is 6-5, 178 pounds. He would be the second-tallest player in the Sailors’ basketball program--if he played. He was a Little League all-star pitcher two years ago and excelled as a club swimmer and soccer player.

But Abrams is now a one-sport athlete. He was ranked No. 1 nationally among 14-year-old tennis players last year and is top-seeded among 16-year-olds in Southern California tournaments this year. He finished third at an international tournament, has competed in Japan and Puerto Rico, and as a recent appointee to the U.S. Tennis Assn. national team, he will likely see Europe.

“For him, it makes sense to specialize just because he’s that good, and you understand why he plays only one sport,” Tweit said. “Even when he was in eighth grade, you could guess that he probably has a full ride (scholarship) waiting, so you say, ‘We’d love to have him,’ but we also understand he’s an exception to the rule.”

Abrams’ value to a freshman basketball program is obvious, and he sometimes wonders what might happen if he still played baseball. “I look at what Bobby Bonds signed for. . . . “ he said.

“At this point, he’s the best that has come through here in 20 years,” said his high school tennis coach, Tex Bleiker. “He wants to be a pro and he can’t do that playing basketball.”

BRAINWASHED?

Rhiannon Tanaka competed in one track meet as a sophomore and won the 100 meters.

Then she quit. She wanted to concentrate on soccer and an upcoming club tournament. Now the junior midfielder on Marina’s soccer team has no intention of competing on this year’s track team, saying it’s not any fun.

“It’s not an exciting thing to do,” she said. “It’s kind of boring. Very boring. It’s constant running. There’s no excitement, and anyone can run any time they want. I like team sports much more than personal sports where you are competing for yourself.”

So Tanaka plays soccer. She was second-team All-Sunset League as a freshman and sophomore. Degen, the track coach, called her one of the most aggressive girls he has seen.

“She’s a great soccer player--I’ve watched her a few times,” Degen said. “She could be a good high school track athlete.”

Degen and Tanaka may never know if she would have developed into a track star, but she certainly could have helped the program. When she quit a year ago, it wasn’t because of boredom.

She was told by her high school soccer coach, Bobby Bruch, and her mother, Vickie, that she should decide what sport she wanted to play “because it was getting closer to the time when I was going to have to make a decision on what was going to take me farther, what was going to help me get into college.”

And there was a club soccer tournament in Dallas that was fast approaching.

Tanaka admits she probably could have competed the entire track season and not lost anything in the way of soccer development. With the competitive spirit most good athletes have, she concedes she sometimes regrets her decision and not finding out how good she really could have become.

“I would like to have found out how far I could go in league and in the section (in track),” Tanaka said. “If I think about it, I know that I probably did the right thing, but sometimes I do think about what could have happened and regret it.

“I just think I had to do what was going to take me the farthest, what I was going to do the best in, what was the most fun and what was most worth my time.”

She also quit a club volleyball team and did not compete in the sport last fall, though she played for the school her freshman and sophomore years.

For every Geoff Abrams, there are dozens of Rhiannon Tanakas. Degen, who is entering his 11th year as the school’s track coach, feels strongly about athletes like Tanaka who concentrate on one sport.

“I think teams should share athletes,” Degen said. “Kids, especially girls, are pressured so much by club soccer and volleyball teams, and it’s drilled into them that if they don’t play club, they’re not going to get a scholarship, and I think that’s where some of the lies are. Once you get into college, you have to specialize. Athletes like (former Marina basketball player) Cherokee Parks, I can understand. Other athletes, they should be able to get a wide variety of experiences.

“I want them in my program, but I think it would be a great experience for them, too. I think they are brainwashed, for lack of a better word, by their club coaches. I honestly believe that.”

Degen isn’t alone.

“I’ll tell you the thing that burns me, the volleyball clubs who are making it more difficult for kids to play,” Laguna Beach Athletic Director Tom Klingenmeier said. “We just had a softball coach (Mike Roche) who had a tryout last Saturday (Jan. 30), and there was a player who had a club volleyball practice, and essentially, the coach told her you’d be cut from the volleyball team if you go to that tryout.

“We’ve had a couple of athletes we’ve lost to club sports.”

Laguna Beach’s student enrollment is 650.

WORKING MAN

“The biggest problems we run into are minority students who feel compelled to work,” said Stan Clark, Westminster athletic director and football coach. “Some manage to work and still play sports, but some don’t feel that’s possible to still do well in the classroom.”

There are those who work to support their family and those who work to support their excesses. Western High’s Omar Aguilar, 17, did both. He started as a running back for the freshman and junior varsity football teams and would have played plenty on the varsity. Instead, Aguilar was working at McDonald’s, saving for a car in $4.25-an-hour increments while the Pioneers were winning their first league title.

“My parents said that I have to work for my car,” Aguilar said. “My mom said if you want extra clothes, work. If you want money to go out, work. If you want a car, come up with at least half of it.”

He will get the car when he turns 18 on June 12.

“If I had to do it all over again,” said Aguilar, a junior, “I would play football.”

Jim Howell, Western athletic director and football coach, said he is empathetic toward athletes with real economic needs.

“If it’s a financial situation, you certainly understand that,” he said. “They have to do what they have to do. It’s their life. “

But Holman pulls no punches when athletes claim they need to work: “I ask, ‘Do you have to work because you want a car or to support your family?’ There’s a difference. They have 50 years to work--you have four years to play high school sports.”

Omar Aguilar gave up one of them.

SURF’S UP

Chris Lang is a Boy Scout who won’t get a car until he makes Eagle Scout. He is a hiker, a snowboarder, a surfer.

It is the latter that keeps him away from the Laguna Beach football team.

He played as a freshman and the football staff has tried to get him out the last two years. He even went through the summer training camp, but could not--would not--commit to playing in the fall.

“I wouldn’t be able to put 100% into football because I have my surfing, and I have to worry about doing good in that one,” Lang said. “It wouldn’t be fair to the team if I didn’t show up or something.”

Lang has gotten it from all sides. His family has been in the school’s booster club and still attends games. And his mother, Cheryl, has a dream.

“There’s nothing more I would like to see than him and his brother (Josh, a sophomore) playing football his senior season,” Cheryl Lang said. “I tell him he should go for it because you never get those years back in high school.”

Lang, once a defensive end, has won a handful of surfing events. But he remembers that football wasn’t the end-all.

“A lot of people who play football are doing it for the fame, not for the team. They’re just showing their parents how good they are. In surfing, you’re one person and you don’t really think about what other people think--you just do it for yourself.

“Sometimes I regret not playing football. When I played when I was a freshman, it was a lot of fun. Besides that, I don’t really miss it. I’d rather surf.”