SPECIAL REPORT : It’s a ‘Community’ Against the World : Junior colleges: Coaches seek limits on foreign athletes, drawing charges of racism.

Some suggested a conspiracy after the top five runners for Riverside College--all of them African--were disqualified for “impeding the progress of other runners” in the state junior college cross-country championships in Fresno last fall.

Riverside, the 1991 state champion, appeared to have romped to its second consecutive title by placing five runners among the top six finishers, but El Camino was awarded the victory when Alamayehu Robba, Muchapiwa Mazano, Abdelkader Chelby, Gray Mavhera and Passmore Furusa were disqualified for infractions cited by race monitors stationed along the four-mile course.

Riverside’s running style--four or five teammates running abreast at the front of the pack to dictate pace--is well-known throughout the state. Although that style could be interpreted as a rules violation, the Tigers had run that way for the previous two seasons and had neither been penalized nor warned.

The ruling begged the question: Were race officials influenced by a growing resentment in junior college athletic circles against foreign athletes competing at California community colleges?

If so, Riverside was the obvious target because its coach, Ted Banks, has built the program on the talents of foreign athletes.

Bakersfield Coach Bob Covey, the chairman of officials at the state cross-country championships, vehemently denies any plan to punish Riverside, but Banks and Ron Allice of Long Beach City both said they heard rumors of a conspiracy against Riverside several weeks before the meet. Banks was so sure that he doped out the meet based on the assumption that two of the Tigers’ top five runners would be disqualified.

Although foreigners have been winning NCAA and NAIA titles in various sports for the past quarter-century, the increasing number of foreigners in California’s junior college ranks is a relatively new--and growing--phenomenon.

Foreign athletes have had little impact in football, baseball and basketball, sports that are immensely popular in the United States, but men’s cross-country, track and field and tennis have attracted numerous foreign athletes--and commensurate controversy.

Foreigners have become so dominant in distance running that coaches, including Dean Lofgren of El Camino, commonly use the term “top American” when discussing the results from state championship meets.

Lofgren notes that seventh-place Angel Martinez of Mt. San Antonio was the top American in last year’s state cross-country championships before the five Riverside runners were disqualified.

Likewise, Glendale’s Oved Aguirre earned the “top American” tag in the 5,000 meters during last year’s state track and field championships when he finished sixth behind an Ethiopian (the late Desta Asgedom of Riverside), three Zimbabweans (Mavhera, Furusa and Mazano) and a Mexican (Gabino Toledo of San Diego Mesa).

The foreign influence in men’s tennis is just as significant. Twelve of the top 15 singles players in the latest junior college rankings were not born in the United States.

Debate over the influx of foreign athletes has become so heated that the California Commission on Athletics conducted a study for the current school year on the percentage of foreign athletes. Foreign participation in football (0.9%), men’s and women’s basketball (1.9%) and baseball (0.7%) is negligible.

Although the percentages for men’s cross-country (6.3%), track (4.3%) and tennis (8.3%) are small, coaches are quick to point out that it is the quality--not the quantity--of foreign athletes that alarms them.

“Most of the runners who are going to Riverside are world-class athletes,” says Mark Covert, the cross-country and track coach at Antelope Valley. “A lot of those guys (run on the European track and field circuit) during the summer and hold their own. A local kid at a community college, who is 18, 19 or 20 years old, doesn’t have a chance against them.”

The results of last year’s state track championships back Covert’s view. Africans from Riverside won every men’s race from 800 through 10,000 meters, topped by a 1-2-3-4 finish in the 5,000.

Riverside’s foreign athletes are expected to sweep all five men’s distance races in this year’s state championships--which start today at Shasta College in Redding--and lead the Tigers to their second consecutive title.

No doubt another Riverside victory will supply more ammunition for critics.

But Allice and others say the uproar is fueled by more-troubling sentiments, namely racism, because most of the foreign track and cross-country athletes are either African or Latin American. “Sometimes, the foreign issue is definitely a racist issue,” said Allice, whose Long Beach City team won the 1983 state title in men’s track with Venezuelans accounting for 66 of the team’s 93 points.

“I’ll bet I could have had 10 Australians or Englishmen (in 1983) and the issue would not have become what it has,” he said.

Covert dismisses that argument. He maintains that opposition to foreign athletes stems from concerns over fair play and adherence to the principle that recruiting is against the rules.

“I find it real hard to believe that a bunch of kids in Africa got together and said, ‘Let’s go to Riverside!’ ” Covert said. “(Banks) says these kids call him, but I have a (tough) time getting kids from Quartz Hill to call me even when I put the word out that I’d like to talk to them.”

And the trend toward foreign athletes is increasing. In last week’s Southern California women’s track championships, Ethiopians Emebet Shiferaw (Riverside) and Genet Gbregiorgis (L.A. Trade Tech), and Bahaman Dawn Williams (Riverside) combined to win every race from 800 to 5,000 meters. All three enter the state meet as favorites.

The controversy is apt to become more heated. The influx of foreign athletes raises questions about the nature and purpose of community college athletics.

How do these athletes end up at California junior colleges and why do they come here? Should the state impose a quota system? Are recruiting rules lax and unenforceable? How does the California system compare nationwide? How do U.S.-born junior college athletes feel about competing against world-class foreign opponents?

What place, if any, do foreign athletes have in a system ostensibly geared for the community?

RECRUITING

If a coach is known as a great recruiter at the four-year college level, it is a compliment.

But a junior college coach in California with the same reputation might as well be wearing a scarlet letter R.

The guiding principle behind state junior college rules is a ban on recruiting athletes--with a few exceptions--outside a school’s designated area. While some states allow recruiting and permit junior colleges to award scholarships, California does not allow scholarships of any kind and permits only a few schools, in “sparsely populated areas,” to pursue athletes outside their local recruiting areas.

Some conferences, such as the Foothill, allow their schools to recruit outside the state because they have small enrollments. Antelope Valley can--and does--recruit athletes from Las Vegas and as far away as Miami.

The remaining junior colleges in California each have a list of high schools within a specific geographic area from which they can recruit, but coaches cannot contact athletes, including foreigners, from outside that area until the athletes initiate contact with the coach.

For example, Long Beach City has a recruiting area that includes Long Beach Poly, Long Beach Wilson, Long Beach Jordan, Millikan, Lakewood and St. Anthony highs, but track athletes from other high schools interested in attending Long Beach must contact Allice before he can approach them.

Despite the guidelines, charges of recruiting are rampant. Walt Rilliet, state commissioner of community college athletics, admits that the rules are impossible to enforce.

“We can’t be out on the field as a police force,” he said. “It’s a self-compliance policy. . . . Right now, it’s (left up to) institutional integrity.”

Banks, the men’s cross-country and track coach at Texas El Paso from 1973-82, denies that he illegally recruits athletes. Africans who come to Riverside have been encouraged to contact Banks by acquaintances or by former Riverside athletes, he said.

Banks uses Kenyan Julius Kariuki, the 1988 Olympic champion in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, as Exhibit A in his defense. He contends that countryman Wilson Waigwa, the 1977 NCAA champion in the 1,500 for UTEP, told Kariuki about Banks, paving the way for Kariuki’s enrollment at Riverside.

“I had some pretty good success at UTEP,” Banks said. “And that success results in former athletes sending guys my way.”

Rilliet acknowledged that successful programs are like magnets.

“People aren’t stupid,” he said. “Guys see who won the state championship and say, ‘I want to go there.’ Pipelines get started. We can’t stop that.”

THE FACTORS

Proposition 48 is “the biggest single factor in bringing foreign and out-of-state kids to California junior colleges,” according to Allice, the Long Beach coach.

Under Proposition 48 guidelines, which went into effect in the fall of 1986, an athlete must have a 2.0 grade-point average in core curriculum classes during high school and must score a minimum of 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or a 17 on the American College Test to be eligible to compete at an NCAA Division I school.

Those regulations have been a boon to junior colleges, which serve as an alternate route to Division I for many athletes who fail to meet those requirements. After two years of competing at a junior college, a student-athlete who earns an Associate of Arts degree is eligible for Division I.

“Prop. 48 has totally changed the face of junior college athletics in California,” Allice said. “And nowhere is that more obvious than in track and field.”

Increasingly, foreign athletes are using junior colleges as a springboard to international competition as well as to U.S. four-year schools. Many international sports federations can’t match the facilities and coaching available at the junior college level in the United States. Besides, junior college tuition, especially after a foreign athlete establishes California residency after a year, is a bargain.

Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, for example, attended Riverside from 1989-90 and passed up offers from U.S. universities to return to Algeria. A year later, he won the 1,500 meters at the World Championships and last year set the world record in the same event.

Southern California’s drawing power is enhanced because of the environment: The weather is conducive to year-round training, and in the case of Latin-American athletes, the large Spanish-speaking population makes attendance at a Southern California school less of a culture shock than going somewhere like Ricks College in Rexburg, Ida.

Also, the sheer volume of junior college track programs in California appeals to athletes. Seventy-four of the 98 junior colleges in the state that field athletic teams have men’s track programs. In Texas, on the other hand, only six of 44 junior colleges have track programs. In Florida, only three of 31 have track teams.

Kansas (16 of 22) is the only state in the country with more than 20 junior colleges that has a percentage of track programs comparable to California.

“What we’ve had recently is a situation where international students are being recruited who just want to come (to California) to play sports,” Rilliet said. “Some countries send athletes to our community colleges (to train) because (the colleges) really are not that expensive. But we are saying that that’s not what we are here for. We are supposed to be educational institutions first.”

THE PERSPECTIVES

When Covert was running for Cal State Fullerton in the early 1970s, he enjoyed competing against foreigners such as Irishman Neil Cusack of East Tennessee State, Briton Dan Murphy of Washington State and Australian Kerry Pearce of Texas El Paso because they pushed him to some of his best performances.

But the number of foreigners at Riverside who are vastly more talented than most all of the local junior college runners makes for an unacceptable competitive imbalance, he said.

“When you’re aspiring to be one of the top guys in the country like I was, I think you’re aspiring to be one of the top guys in the world, so you need to race (foreigners),” Covert said. “But I had worked my way up to that level. I was in my third and fourth year of college. I would not have been able to compete with those guys when I was a 9:27 two-miler fresh out of Burbank High.”

Despite that belief, Covert and others such as Lofgren, Moorpark men’s track coach Doni Green, Valley men’s track coach James Harvey and Glendale cross-country Coach Eddie Lopez have no objections to one or two foreigners at a school.

They cringe, however, at more the presence of more foreigners than that.

Lopez, who coached Guatemalan Hugo Allan Garcia to the 1990 state cross-country title, said: “What’s happened at Riverside is totally out of control. It’s not fair.”

Banks and Allice want no limits on the number of foreigners, arguing that they raise the quality of competition. Their views are not surprising.

Banks, the coach of Riverside’s men’s cross-country and track teams since 1988, had enormous success during his tenure at Texas El Paso, winning a combined total of 17 Division I titles in cross-country, and indoor and outdoor track.

His track teams were characterized by a large contingent of foreign athletes ranging from Kenyan, Tanzanian and South African distance runners to Jamaican sprinters to Canadian and Bahaman jumpers to Swedish, Norwegian and Australian throwers.

“If a good kid comes to your school, you should want to coach him,” Banks said. “His place of origin shouldn’t matter. You should want to coach the best kids you can.”

Allice was the men’s track coach at Division I Cal State Long Beach from 1974-78 before moving to Long Beach City, where his teams have won nine state track titles since 1979 with a blend of foreign, out-of-state and Northern and Southern Californian athletes.

“I understand perfectly how other coaches feel,” Allice said. “But I’m not going to turn away athletes who want to go to school here. . . . When you’ve had the success we’ve had, kids want to come. The program sells itself.”

Ventura Coach Tuck Mason bristles when he hears that argument. He maintains that the inclusion of foreign athletes violates everything community colleges represent.

“If they brought foreign athletes over here who were just run-of-the-mill student-athletes, I wouldn’t have a problem with it,” Mason said. “But they bring over world-class athletes who most kids cannot possibly compete with.”

Ventura freshman Ryan Ferguson, who finished ninth in the 10,000 meters in the Southern California championships, holds a similar view.

“Most of those guys should be running at the Division I level,” Ferguson said. “I realize they (do not meet Proposition 48 requirements), but it’s no contest for them to run against local junior college runners.”

Mason points to Kariuki and Morceli as examples of the inequity in talent between foreign and U.S. junior college athletes.

Kariuki won the 10,000 meters for Riverside in the 1988 state junior college championships four months before his Olympic triumph in Seoul.

Morceli came to Riverside the next year and claimed five state titles in cross-country and track before winning the 1,500 at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo and lowering the world record last year.

Covert disagrees with Mason’s strict no foreigners allowed view, but he admits that Bobby Thomas, the 1975 World Junior (age 19 and under) cross-country champion as a Glendale College freshman, would be hard-pressed to break into the top five at Riverside.

“Even a guy like Bobby Thomas would get his (butt) kicked today,” Covert said. “That’s unbelievable.”

RACISM OR FAIR PLAY?

Banks and Allice say their critics have a hidden agenda: racism. Resentment against dark-skinned athletes has fueled the firestorm against foreigners, they assert.

“Racism is definitely a factor. There is no doubt about that,” Banks said. “They were always on me because I recruited black Africans at UTEP, but Arkansas recruits a lot of guys from Ireland and you don’t hear too much criticism about that.”

Banks’ claim would appear to carry weight.

He and Washington State Coach John Chaplin came under heavy fire in the 1970s because their cross-country teams were composed almost entirely of East Africans, but teams such as Providence--with many runners from Ireland--and Western Kentucky--with many runners from Great Britain--did not catch as much flak.

Of course, those two schools were not as successful as UTEP--which won six Division I titles from 1975-’81--or Washington State--which included Kenyan Henry Rono, winner of three individual titles.

“I don’t want to go into details about everything that happened,” Banks said. “But the criticism seemed to be stronger against us than against other schools.”

Harvey, who is black, also feels that racism plays a part in the backlash against Riverside, but adds that many critics are sincerely concerned about fairness.

“It’s definitely a racial issue, but it is also a fairness issue,” Harvey said. “There is no doubt in my mind that if all these kids at Riverside were (white kids from Great Britain), Ted wouldn’t be catching the kind of heat he is. But you also have to ask yourself if it’s fair for older, more-experienced foreign athletes to come over here and blow away local kids.”

Covert, the 1968 state junior college cross-country champion at Valley, says that claims of racism are a convenient way for coaches to deflect criticism. A school with a preponderance of talented foreign athletes, such as Riverside, he asserts, detracts from the excitement of the state cross-country championships because no team has a chance of beating them.

“With the guys we have coming back and with the runners I think we’re going to get, we should have a great chance of being competitive with everyone in the state--except Riverside--next season,” Covert said.

“And I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think it’s good for the sport and I don’t think it’s good for me to tell my kids, ‘Hey. If you train real hard over the summer and run to your capabilities during the fall, you can finish second in the State meet, but there’s no way you can win.’ ”

SPECIAL REPORT

SATURDAY: The Recruiting Trail

Paul Xanthos built a tennis dynasty that spanned nearly 30 years at Pierce College, but critics complain that too much of that success was fueled by a foreign player pipeline. But Pierce is hardly alone. Only two of the nation’s 20 top-rated men’s junior college players this year are Americans.

SUNDAY: Athletes Speak Out

Californian runners and tennis players arrive at their local junior colleges right out of high school and find themselves competing against world-class athletes from around the globe. While some find motivation in the competition, others say the system is out of whack.