Right and Wrong Appear to Mean Little

It is time for athletes, parents, coaches and administrators to look at where high school sports are headed.

Serious soul-searching and research are likely to turn up some unpleasant findings, things that have been brushed aside or ignored far too long.

Although participation levels have remained stable--or in some cases have slightly increased--in recent years, the bending and breaking of rules has skyrocketed. Athletes have been getting away with too much for too long, and administrators tend to look the other way too often.

The latest example of that occurred last week when it came to light that eight of California’s top basketball players had participated in a national all-star tournament sponsored by Nike at the company’s headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.

The tournament was held Sept. 10-12, well after the Sept. 1 deadline for such events, and required the players to miss a day of school. But it offered them an opportunity to show their stuff in front of many of the nation’s top college coaches. They were also given equipment worth several hundred dollars and $100 gift certificates to use in the company store.

The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs California high school sports, investigated. Its only finding was that the players violated the Sept. 1 rule.

Thomas Byrnes, commissioner of the CIF, said he believed that the players had not knowingly broken the rule and that the blame properly belonged with the adults who organized the event. He decided not to punish the players.

Byrnes said he had no jurisdiction to rule on the free equipment or gift certificates, because the tournament was not sponsored by the CIF.

But the commissioner’s reluctance to penalize for a clear violation sends the wrong message. The CIF needs to let everyone know that it does not tolerate the breaking of rules.

Even if the players and Nike were unaware of the violation, a five-game suspension would have sent a strong message, the right message.

It is too easy to blame Nike in this case. Parents of the players should have questioned sending their kids to a tournament in which they had to miss a day of school. And didn’t any of them think a $100 gift certificate might be unethical? Players also need to set their priorities and decide how much emphasis they should put on out-of-school competition.

Then again, putting athletic interests first is a growing trend. The Southern Section, the largest of 10 such sections in the CIF, had more than 1,100 transfer requests and more than 500 hardship requests last calendar year. The requests represent only a fraction of the section’s transfers, however, and do not include students’ families who move from one school district to another.

Many of those moves are not done properly, but go unnoticed unless challenged.

“We are not an investigating agency,” Stan Thomas, Southern Section commissioner, told The Times last spring. “We don’t have a staff like the (National Collegiate Athletic Assn.) has.”

Some of the Southland’s better-tracked transfers have gone unpunished.

Perry Klein transferred from Pacific Palisades to Carson in 1988 to play football. After quarterbacking the Colts to the City Division 4-A championship, he transferred to Santa Monica the last semester of his senior year to play volleyball. He said his family had moved to Carson to be closer to his father’s business.

John Walsh, now the starting quarterback at Brigham Young, transferred from West Torrance to Carson in 1991. After leading the Colts to the City 4-A title, he went back to West Torrance for baseball season. He said his parents had legally separated when he went to Carson and then said they had reconciled when he returned to West Torrance.

And last spring, the Crenshaw boys’ basketball team won the State Division I championship with a team that had nine transfer players. Hal Harkness, City commissioner, investigated the team for eligibility violations for five weeks but said he found no wrongdoing.

Parents and athletes have found loopholes in a system in desperate need of fixing, and they have taken advantage of them. Coaches and administrators often do a poor job of verifying eligibility, but increasing demands on their time leave them in vulnerable situations.

That leaves the CIF with the difficult task of cleaning up many messes, but it is reluctant to rule firmly because it fears lawsuits and wants to keep political peace among its competitive sections.

There are no easy answers to a growing list of complex problems. Until the CIF streamlines its organization so that all of its sections are similar in size and power, it will be difficult to keep peace. The rules must also be the same for everyone so that discrepancies can be limited.

And leaders not afraid to make the right decisions must step up so the fading positive image of high school sports is not completely lost to outsiders more concerned with personal gain.

Prep Notes

An injury resulted in an early end to the Rowland-Walnut football game last Friday at Rowland High. With 3 minutes remaining in the nonleague game, Walnut linebacker Geoff Ackerman suffered a neck injury. Unsure of the seriousness of the injury, officials halted the game until paramedics could arrive. With Rowland leading, 21-7, coaches from both teams decided to end the game early rather than wait the 30 minutes it was going to take to get Ackerman off the field. “Unless God struck lightning on Rowland, we weren’t going to win this football game,” said Jim Patricio, Walnut’s coach. Ackerman suffered a bruised neck and might play this week.

Miles Simon, a 6-foot-4 basketball guard from Santa Ana Mater Dei, made an oral commitment to Arizona last week. What was unusual about the announcement was that Simon never visited the school. The Southern Section Division I player of the year last season said he was impressed by the way Lute Olsen recruited him. . . . Mike LeDuc, who led the Glendora boys’ basketball team to five league titles and two Southern Section championships from 1986-92, is returning as the school’s coach after a year’s absence. LeDuc, Glendora’s athletic director, replaces Greg Plutko, who left to accept a vice principal’s job at a nearby middle school.

The mascot controversy at Mission Viejo High was settled last week when the student body voted for a smiling baby devil to represent the school’s nickname of the Diablos. The mascot used to be a meaner looking devil, but was switched to a bulldog in 1986 because of protests from the community.

Times’ Top 20 Football Poll

The Times’ top 20 high school football poll, with teams from the City and Southern Sections.

School Sect. Div. Rec. LW 1. Loyola SS I 3-0 1 2. Bishop Amat SS I 3-0 2 3. Eisenhower SS I 3-0 3 4. Muir SS II 3-0 4 5. Hart SS II 3-0 5 6. Los Alamitos SS II 3-0 6 7. Newbury Park SS III 3-0 7 8. Hawthorne SS III 2-1 11 9. CC Canyon SS II 3-0 12 10. Esperanza SS II 2-1 17 11. Norco SS V 3-0 14 12. LB Poly SS I 2-1 16 13. Antelope Valley SS I 2-1 13 14. Fountain Valley SS II 3-0 NR 15. Hunt. Beach SS II 3-0 NR 16. Taft City 4-A 3-0 18 17. Irvine SS IV 2-1 10 18. Dominguez SS II 3-0 NR 19. Dorsey City 4-A 3-0 20 20. El Camino Real City 4-A 3-0 NR