Cloud Hovers Over Section’s Eligibility Rule for Freshmen : Inter-district transfers: Sebek plays for Buena and lives in Ojai, and it’s legal under regulations for incoming ninth-graders.

Freshman guard Kori Sebek’s choice of high school prompts a question: How is the daughter of the Nordhoff boys’ basketball coach allowed to play for Buena when the family lives in the Nordhoff attendance area?

Dave Baldwin, Ventura High’s athletic counselor, said he has been asked precisely that by parents, who wonder how a player with Sebek’s talents--and address--can wind up playing for Ventura’s rival.

Sebek, who lives with her family in Ojai, earned a quick promotion to the Buena varsity this season. She is averaging about 10 minutes and three points a game on the varsity. Said Buena Coach Joe Vaughan: “She’s eventually going to be an excellent player.”

Sebek was granted an inter-district transfer last summer from the Ojai Unified School District to the Ventura Unified School District.

Officially, there are no allegations of wrongdoing regarding Sebek’s transfer nor of Vaughan recruiting her. However, her enrollment at Buena, some claim, calls into question the spirit of Southern Section rules regarding inter-district transfers before students’ freshman years. As Buena opponents consider the prospect of facing Sebek for the next three seasons--the transfer focuses attention on a little-known Southern Section rule that allows athletic eligibility for incoming ninth-grade students regardless of the athlete’s residence.

Vaughan runs one of the area’s premier girls’ basketball programs and is widely respected. In Vaughan’s 18 years as coach, Buena is 422-42 and has won two state and Southern Section championships.

“I know Joe Vaughan and his character, and his ability to teach and be a good role model for kids is unquestioned,” Southern Section Associate Commissioner Dean Crowley said.

Vaughan, however, recognizes unsettling aspects of Sebek’s transfer.

“This particular case can make you a little uneasy because the assumption is that there is recruiting, that there is undue influence,” he said. “But we would never operate that way.”

However, the transfer has already caused controversy. After a parent complained about Sebek’s presence on the Buena team in November, Ventura and Buena officials met to discuss Sebek, Southern Section eligibility rules and inter-district transfers.

Baldwin, who took the matter of Sebek’s transfer to Ventura officials and attended the meeting, said questions persist about the case. Baldwin, who called Crowley during the meeting to confirm the rule regarding freshman eligibility, said he sensed a reluctance on the Southern Section’s part to investigate. Baldwin claimed the rule creates a potential to recruit athletes.

“If you were a gung-ho coach and wanted to go out and talk to kids . . . who were incoming ninth-graders and persuade them to come to your school, the (Southern Section) is not going to push the issue,” Baldwin said.

Sebek said she enrolled at Buena because she wanted to escape possible pressures at Nordhoff--the school she would have attended--and because of the reputation of Buena’s basketball program and her many friends at Buena.

Inter-district transfers are not granted for athletic purposes, according to Crowley.

“My brothers went to Nordhoff, and they have good reputations there, and I just wanted to be myself, because I’m a Sebek and everyone expects a lot,” she said.

Her father, Dick, teaches at Nordhoff and is in his 18th year as boys’ basketball coach. Her brothers, Mark, 16, and Tim, 18, have played for their father. Mark is a junior guard at Nordhoff and Tim plays for Azusa Pacific.

“I’d always heard good things about the (Buena) program,” Kori Sebek said. “(Vaughan) and my dad have always known each other. When I was younger, I always went to the Perry/Vaughan basketball camp in the summer. I had a lot of friends going to Buena. I have a close friend on the varsity, Michelle Giordano.”

Giordano, a junior forward at Buena who was a Times’ All-Ventura County selection last season, is the daughter of Mike Giordano, who coached Sebek the past three seasons on the Ventura Stars, a youth traveling team.

According to Baldwin and Buena Principal Jaime Castellanos, who also attended the November meeting, Wayne Toscas, head of the Ventura school district’s office of child welfare and attendance, said Sebek’s transfer was approved because of a child care/supervisorial hardship--a reason that is allowed for high school students under a change in state legislation last year.

“The answer we got from Wayne was that it was approved and that there wasn’t much to talk about,” Baldwin said. “Wayne Toscas explained to us that child care is a very powerful rule, but it also has to be substantiated. Is this true? Does her junior brother need (supervision)? If she needs child care every day, what about her brother? He goes to practice every day. Why doesn’t she do the same? I think intent is the big question on this whole thing.”

Kori Sebek did not mention child-care issues when asked about the transfer. Dick Sebek denied that Kori needed any sort of child care and declined to comment about the reasons for the transfer.

“I went through proper procedures for getting an inter-district transfer,” he said. “It was all done very up front and very ethically.”

Asked whether his daughter transferred to Buena to play basketball, Sebek said, “No, I don’t think that’s true.”

Kori and her father said Kori comes directly home after practice, and that there was no child care or extra supervision required.

But Castellanos said: “Before school and after school, before she was picked up by her parents, she was staying with another family inside the Buena school district.”

No one doubts that a program’s reputation can be a powerful--and legal--incentive for a young athlete. “Good programs are natural recruiters,” Crowley said. “And that’s legal under our rules.”

Said Vaughan: “It would never be necessary for us to recruit because we wouldn’t need to. I have enough integrity not to go with that.”

Vaughan might be especially sensitive about questionable inter-district transfers by incoming freshmen. Before her freshman year in 1988, Michelle Palmisano moved from her parents’ home in the Buena attendance area into a Thousand Oaks apartment with her adult sister. Palmisano became the state’s all-time leading scorer among guards and led Thousand Oaks to victories over Buena the past two Southern Section Division I-A finals.

Now it is Sebek’s transfer that raises questions about the sanctity of school district boundaries, and the motives of coaches and parents.

“The first thing that sticks in my mind is that a case like this has to be for athletic reasons and a future scholarship,” Baldwin said. “I would assume that Sebek is there for higher visibility and scholarship offers.”

Said Crowley about successful programs and their lure: “There’s the old adage, the rich get richer. And there’s also the adage that parents want their kids to be in the best program--where they’ll get a lot of attention from college scouts. They say, ‘Wouldn’t I love to get my youngster a full ride from a four-year university?’ That’s a lot of money.”

But it is not fair for opponents, Baldwin said. Ventura, also a girls’ basketball power, routinely finishes behind Buena in Channel League play.

“The (Ventura) coaches have to go out there and face Sebek for three more years,” Baldwin said. “They’re going to feel as if their noses are rubbed in it.”