PREP EXTRA : Some Coaches Trying to Ease Hardship Cases

Mary Hauser knows good coaches have to expect the unexpected. And Hauser, Mater Dei girls’ basketball coach, believes she can hold her own with the savviest designers of X’s and O’s.

But off the court, Hauser was admittedly unprepared to deal with the situations that confront many high school coaches in the 1990s: financial or personal problems in their student-athletes’ living arrangements.

“I never really did (expect those types of problems),” Hauser said. “Everybody in my family was very supportive when I was growing up, and I didn’t face those things. Until you’re put in that situation, you can’t really comprehend it.”

Increasingly, coaches in Orange County--and throughout the Southland--lose athletes because circumstances force families to relocate. Consequently, coaches find themselves working with school administrators to help students secure temporary, alternative living situations that will allow them to complete school in one place.

Hauser experienced this scenario first-hand last year. One of her basketball players had a family problem that would have required her to leave school.

“I looked at the situation and asked myself, ‘What’s in the best interest of the kid?’ ” Hauser said. “You’re talking about a 15-, 16-year-old kid and you’re talking about (her) life. If I don’t try to help this kid, what’s going to happen to (her)?”

With the help of Hauser and Mater Dei’s administration, the student moved in with the parents of another Monarch student. She is still a member of the girls’ basketball team.

Although that situation worked out well, many others do not. Former Los Amigos football Coach Steve Bolton has witnessed the latter.

“When you see kids in trouble you want to help them,” said Bolton, who now coaches the Lobos’ offensive line. “You get so close to these kids, you just wish you could take them all into your house. You know you can’t, so you help them by trying to find them other places (to live).

“We’ve had other people in our program take kids in. You just wish there was a way you could help them more.”

On the surface, some might view this type of intervention as improper. Hauser and Bolton disagree.

“If you don’t try to help them and something goes bad, you feel responsible because you could have helped them,” Hauser said. “Isn’t that what coaching is all about--trying to help kids?”

Said Bolton: “You get so close to these kids. You say to yourself, ‘These are (my) kids, and they’re out there working hard and I’ve got to help them.’ ”

The Southern Section shares this view.

Schools that assist students in finding housing are not in violation of section rules forbidding undue influence of athletes, section Commissioner Dean Crowley said.

“For hardship reasons, we usually allow it,” Crowley said. “We’re seeing more and more financial hardship cases . . . more and more youngsters in broken homes. That’s something that’s beyond the youngsters’ control.”

The section requires financial or legal documentation when schools provide such assistance. Coaches cannot directly care for students, but they can work in conjunction with administrators to find other housing.

“It’s been growing, but we still probably get less than a dozen cases a year,” Crowley said. “Sometimes we won’t even get them because it’s taken care of by school authorities and we won’t have to get involved.”

Although the apparatus is in place to assist students, some coaches choose not to get involved. Those coaches say their responsibility to students ends when the competition stops.

Hauser doesn’t agree.

“It’s a personal decision,” Hauser said, “and it’s something I just feel I have to do.”