Story Behind Sparks Story Is Promised : High schools: Washington State running back says book will reveal shady side of transfers among Southland schools.

As a high school football player in the late 1980s, Derek Sparks had a reputation as a fast mover--on the field and between schools. He was as famous for his transfers as he was for his touchdowns. He rushed for 63 of them at three Southern California schools. After he had transferred from a Texas school.

His profile has been considerably lower the last few years, but as Sparks prepares for his final season as a Washington State running back, he is collaborating with a Los Angeles writer on a book that chronicles his tumultuous prep career.

The story will portray Sparks as a victim of unscrupulous high school recruiters and academic fraud.

“It goes into deep detail,” said Sparks, a fifth-year senior at Washington State. “The chaos, the inducements, the grade changing, scouts coming on campus, cars and money, airline tickets . . .”

The book, being written with Stuart K. Robinson, also will touch on a little-known aspect of Sparks’ controversial career--a $40-million lawsuit he filed against Montclair Prep months after his 1991 graduation from Santa Ana Mater Dei, the fourth high school he attended.

Sparks, who played for Montclair Prep as a junior, sued the Van Nuys school for allegedly lowering his grades and misrepresenting his academic standing to college scouts after he and his cousin, Leland Sparks, had transferred to Mater Dei in the fall of 1990.

The suit was settled out of court. Sparks said he was awarded an annuity to be paid over his lifetime but would not reveal the dollar amount because of a gag order.

“It turned out well,” Sparks said. “It was enough that I was able to give some [money] to charity and do some things for my mom.”

Sparks said he has used the annuity to, among other things, buy his mother a car and donate $10,000 to Mater Dei and $5,000 to his fraternity at Washington State. Mater Dei Principal Patrick Murphy confirmed the donation, saying the money was used to help build two computer labs at the school last summer.

“It was very generous on Derek’s part,” Murphy said.

Vernon (Doc) Simpson, owner and principal of Montclair Prep, said Sparks’ award was considerably less than the $40 million sought in the lawsuit. The decision to settle was made at the recommendation of lawyers representing the school’s insurance company, Simpson added.

“The attorneys’ fees were adding up and it was taking an extraordinary amount of time to deal with,” Simpson said. “We felt it was best to settle it and get it out of the way.”

Simpson denied that Montclair Prep had tampered with Sparks’ grades or had intentionally damaged the player’s reputation among recruiters.

“Our coaches swear they never said anything derogatory about [Derek],” Simpson said. “I think the fact that he changed schools had a lot to do with colleges not being interested in him. We said he was a good kid.”

Derek contends that several colleges, among them his No. 1 choice, UCLA, stopped recruiting him because of the confusion surrounding his academic standing after his transfer to Mater Dei. He said only Washington State, Illinois and Arkansas offered him scholarships.

A UCLA source supported Sparks’ contention, confirming that there was a hold-up in getting grades from Montclair Prep.

Mater Dei received three different transcripts from Montclair Prep before Sparks was declared eligible to play football for the Monarchs.

“I’ve been in education for 18 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Murphy, who was vice principal when Sparks attended Mater Dei.

Sparks, 22, says he has put the past behind him but wanted to show that the problems he encountered in high school are common among prized young athletes. He says his book will expose the corruption in prep and college athletics.

“It’s a story someone can learn from because it’s true,” he said.

In high school, Sparks’ school-hopping earned him a reputation as an opportunist.

He didn’t stay long at any of the four high schools he attended, playing a season each for Wharton High in his native Texas, Wilmington Banning, Montclair Prep and Mater Dei.

Since going to Washington State, he has had two shoulder operations, sat out the 1993 season and has run for only three touchdowns.

The 6-foot, 220-pound tailback had a good spring practice, though, and is eager to show he can carry the ball 20 times a game rather than play only as a short-yardage specialist, as he did last season.

“Coach [Mike] Price said he’s going to let me carry the load,” said Sparks, who rushed for 312 yards in 119 carries in 1994. “Last year wasn’t a good showing of who I am and how I run.”

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Sparks said he was persuaded to cooperate on a book after meeting Robinson, a West Los Angeles playwright.

Robinson said he found the athlete’s story fascinating.

“I felt that [Sparks] had something to say to young men in America,” Robinson said. “I think the things he has run into in his career are not unique to other young athletes who are forced to become part of the machine.”

Sparks said he has no publishing deal yet and might have to wait on one until after the football season because a contract might jeopardize his eligibility.

“We’ll check that out before anything gets signed,” Robinson said.

Robinson traces Sparks’ problems in high school to a tug-of-war among coaches, administrators and the player’s uncles, Jerome and Eric Sparks, who cared for Derek after he came to California as a 15-year-old sophomore in 1988. Sparks had lived with his mother, June Sparks, in Texas.

“I’m not sure who was the good guy and who was the bad guy, but I have a feeling Derek was the innocent guy in the middle,” Robinson said. “From the time he was 15, he was put in some pretty difficult situations.”

Without knowing it, Sparks became an athletic commodity, Robinson said.

Sparks was persuaded to leave Texas by his uncle, Jerome, a former minor league baseball prospect who thought his nephew had the ability to make it big on the West Coast.

“I knew that California was the sports capital,” Jerome Sparks told The Times in 1989. “I thought a thoroughbred would pick up a certain smell in the air, a certain kind of breeze that would make him much better. I thought it would make him glow.”

Some, however, believe the man behind the move was John Hazelton, a football coach who has worked at several Southland colleges and high schools. A Southern Section panel ruled in 1991 that Hazelton had violated undueinfluence rules by offering recruiting inducements to Jerome Sparks while Derek was a freshman in Wharton, Tex., in 1987, the year Hazelton was the coach at Banning High.

Although Hazelton was fired after one season at Banning, Sparks enrolled at the school and led the Pilots to the City Section 4-A Division final in 1988. He rushed for 1,394 yards and 15 touchdowns.

Despite his success, Sparks transferred in the middle of the school year to Montclair Prep. Sparks and his uncles cited the threat of gang violence and overcrowded classrooms at Banning as reasons for the move.

Weeks later, Hazelton joined the Montclair Prep staff after having coached a season at L.A. Valley College. Sparks also was joined at Montclair Prep by his cousin Leland, another transplanted Texan who played quarterback and wide receiver.

Hazelton, now the coach at Burbank High, said it was coincidental that he and Sparks ended up at Montclair Prep at the same time. He denied ever exercising undue influence over Sparks’ choice of schools.

But Simpson said Hazelton was at the root of the school’s problems with the Sparks family.

“[Hazelton] brought [Derek] to the school and subsequently caused us all these problems with the CIF,” Simpson said. “John Hazelton had promised them things that he was not authorized to promise them. [The Sparks family] felt they had a free ride here.”

Sparks flourished at Montclair Prep, rushing for 1,935 yards and 35 touchdowns as a junior. The following season, though, the relationship between the Sparks family and the school became strained.

Leland Sparks, who repeated the 11th grade at Montclair Prep, was seeking a fifth year of eligibility but was ruled ineligible by the Southern Section hours before the Mounties’ 1989 season opener in Hawaii. Derek played in that game and Leland made the trip, but upon returning they announced they were transferring to Mater Dei.

During a Southern Section hearing to determine if Leland Sparks would be granted a fifth year of eligibility on a hardship appeal, Jerome and Eric Sparks alleged that Montclair Prep had illegally recruited their nephews, changed their grades to protect their eligibility and never charged them tuition.

The Southern Section investigated and put Montclair Prep on three years’ probation and banned the school from playoffs in all sports for the 1991-92 school year.

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Simpson said the accusations of Sparks’ uncles did irreparable damage to Montclair Prep, which has struggled to schedule football games since being voted out of the Alpha League in the 1992-93 school year. The Mounties have competed as a free-lance school ever since and would need a unanimous vote of league representatives to get back in a league.

“It hurt us tremendously,” Simpson said. “You look foolish when you’re trying to defend yourself against accusations that are not true. We’ve been doing that for so long now. Some schools still refuse to play us because of the Sparks thing. It’s gone on much longer than it should have.”

Told that the entire story would be retold if Derek Sparks’ book is published, Simpson was incredulous.

“Who wants to read a book about Derek Sparks?” he asked.

Sparks believes his story transcends sports.

“It’s going to be an enlightened story,” he said. “It’s going to expose a lot of stuff that’s going on in the system.”