Fair Ruling Puts Antelope Valley Where It Belongs

Fortunately for the Antelope Valley High football team, whoever wrote the Golden League constitution left a gaping hole. A hole bigger than one created by the best offensive line.

A hole so big the league’s principals stuffed an entire football team through it.

Normally, an end run around the rules because of a technicality is frowned on. But in this case, a fair decision was made.

The principals should be applauded for not depriving an entire team of the playoff berth it earned because of an administrative error involving a seldom-used reserve.

On Tuesday, the league determined that Antelope Valley would have to forfeit three games because a player it used in those games was academically ineligible.

The decision dropped the Antelopes, whose on-field play had earned them a No. 13 ranking in the state, to last place in the league and out of the playoffs.

The player was ineligible after transferring from a Washington school and officials at Antelope Valley mistakenly cleared him to play.

No one connected with the Antelope Valley football team had done anything wrong, yet a severe punishment was handed down.

Enter Antelope Valley Principal John Hutak, who repeated “the punishment didn’t fit the crime,” like it was his mantra.

The principals of the six league schools spent 5 1/2 hours Thursday sifting through league guidelines to see if, somehow, without breaking the rules, the Antelopes could play.

What they didn’t find was anything in the constitution saying win-loss record determined which teams made the playoffs.

Someone had neglected to codify the obvious.

Thus, the league could uphold the forfeits--no question about it, Antelope Valley broke a rule--but still submit the Antelopes to the Southern Section as a playoff team.

Yes, the principals said to the section, we would like our last-place team to represent us in postseason play.

The section’s reply: Your rules. You make the call.

By sending the Antelopes to the playoffs, the league principals made the right call.

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Icing the victory: Luckily for Crespi Coach Tim Lins, his players are better with a football than with a bucket of ice water. After the Celts (7-4) beat Long Beach Jordan, 35-7, Friday night, giving Lins his first playoff victory in five seasons at Crespi, they tried to douse their coach.

“We tried,” tailback Shaun Williams said, “but we missed him.”

Williams didn’t miss much during the game. He rushed for 231 yards, scored three touchdowns and intercepted two passes. In his past two games, both must wins, he has rushed for 433 yards and scored seven touchdowns.

“I think our team is playing great as a whole,” said Williams, who has gained 1,637 yards and scored 21 touchdowns. “We are picking it up for the playoffs.”

Williams said the Celts benefited from a regular-season schedule that included eight other playoff teams, the most faced by any area playoff team. Since losing to top-ranked Bishop Amat and Loyola--the Celts, incidentally, played well against both teams--Crespi has won four in a row.

The Celts will face San Clemente, which upset Quartz Hill on Friday night, in the Division I quarterfinals this week at Pierce College. Defensive back Vito Clemente has vowed to do a better job with the ice water.

“We’ll get him next time,” he said.

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Northern exposure: North Hollywood basketball Coach Steve Miller’s wife has been doing some shopping for her husband lately. “She got me boots, earmuffs, scarfs, thermal underwear,” Miller said. “Stuff I’ll probably never use again.”

He’ll need it this week. The Huskies begin play Monday in a tournament in Anchorage, Alaska. North Hollywood, touted as perhaps the best team in the Valley, not only will be challenged by the weather--the high temperature in Anchorage today is expected to be 16 degrees--but by the opposition as well.

The top two teams in the tournament, which includes eight teams and concludes Wednesday, are St. Raymond’s of New York and East Anchorage. St. Raymond’s is ranked 22nd in the nation by one publication; East Anchorage boasts Duke-bound Trejan Langdon and a victory last season over eventual California state champion Crenshaw.

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Finding a home: Taft football Coach Troy Starr needed only one day to eliminate a budding quarterback controversy: Brian Shubin, the much-traveled junior transfer who passed for 235 yards in relief of starter Dayon Shaw on Friday, will start in the second round of the City Section 4-A Division playoffs.

“He’s going to be outstanding for us,” Starr said of the passer who has gone from Camarillo, to Thousand Oaks to Canyon to Taft in one year. “We’ve been really impressed with his arm.”

Taft’s regular quarterback, Mike Ferguson, suffered a broken collarbone last week, and Shaw started Friday. But with a comfortable lead on the way to a 55-7 victory over Eagle Rock on Friday, Starr wanted to see what Shubin could do.

He liked what he saw.

The move enables Shaw, one of the team’s most versatile and explosive players, to return to his regular positions of receiver, defensive back and punt returner.

The start will be Shubin’s first at the varsity level. He played only defense and was nagged by injuries at Canyon before transferring four weeks ago, and played on the Thousand Oaks junior varsity last season.

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Really rank: Ever wonder who comes up with those Southern Section football rankings? Not many people, apparently. Every Monday, the section faxes ballots to media outlets throughout the section. Media members are instructed to fill them out, then return them that day so they can be totaled and released.

For the final regular-season polls, the most ballots cast for any division was 10.