Vision for Burbank Sports Supremacy Lost Its Focus

Joe Hooven speaks the words with a defiant mixture of confidence and arrogance.

“Nobody else has the vision I do,” he says.

Hooven, seated in the front room of his stylish two-story home in Burbank, dismisses the notion he suffered a personal setback when he resigned as president of the Burbank school board Feb. 13, shortly after he was accused of covering up an alleged sexual liaison involving a middle-age woman and a teenage football player.

If anything, Hooven indicates the school district has lost. He will tackle other civic issues, but he has no desire to serve the city’s public-education system again.

“I’m out of there, I’m gone,” he says. “[But] I’ll continue to pursue excellence, which is always the way I have acted. That’s my philosophy.”

In Hooven’s case, the pursuit of excellence at Burbank’s two high schools turned into a fruitless chase.

Three years after he was elected to the school board, his plan to improve athletics--particularly football--at Burbank and Burroughs has dissolved into a morass of scandal, arrests and accusations.

“It’s like a Peyton Place,” said Frank Kallem, longtime athletic director at Burbank.

The Burbank football program has borne the brunt of the controversy. In the past week, former Bulldog football coaches John Hazelton and John Greaves were charged by Burbank police with failing to report child abuse. Greaves also was charged with making threats against Hazelton for exposing the sex scandal involving Salle Dumm, 51, former president of the Burbank Educational Foundation, and a 17-year-old Burbank football player.

In addition, based on a joint investigation by the school district and the Southern Section, Burbank’s football program has been beset by allegations of recruiting, residence irregularities and offering inducements to attract transfers.

If there was cheating, it didn’t translate into victories. Burbank posted a 3-17 record in two seasons under Hazelton. The Bulldogs were 0-10 on the field last season. “That’s what I don’t understand,” school board member Michael McDonald said, referring to Burbank’s continued failure in football despite the alleged rules violations. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

School board member Denise Lioy Wilcox, 40, a lifelong Burbank resident, blames a small group of overzealous citizens for the athletic fiasco.

“I think there is a segment of this community that are very wrapped up in high school sports,” Wilcox said. “They become very involved in who’s coaching and who’s winning. I don’t think it is a very healthy thing. I’ve worked in the L.A. Unified School District for 20 years, and I’ve never seen this type of hands-on involvement of community leaders.”

Some trace Burbank High’s problems to the winter of 1994, when a selection committee chose Hazelton over two other finalists for the head-coaching job.

Former Burbank Principal Keiko Hentell says a majority of committee members favored Hazelton, while school administrators were concerned about the reputation of the former coach at Van Nuys’ Montclair Prep.

In 1991, a Southern Section panel ruled that Hazelton violated undue influence rules by offering recruiting inducements to an uncle of Derek Sparks, a former star running back who played his junior season at Montclair Prep. Subsequent problems involving Sparks and his cousin, Leland, who also played for Montclair Prep, prompted the Southern Section to place the school on three years’ probation and ban the Mounties from the playoffs in all sports for the 1991-92 school year.

Hentell, now the assistant principal at Van Nuys High, said after checking into Hazelton’s background all of the Burbank administrators on the selection committee voted for Robert dos Remedios to become coach. But they were outvoted by a majority of the panel made up of community representatives, parents and students.

Dos Remedios later was hired as coach at rival Burroughs and has guided the Indians to victories over Burbank in each of the past two seasons.

“It was a nightmare,” Hentell said of the selection process. “I do believe that there was intermeddling by a member or members of the board of education that affected the way the committee voted. So I don’t believe it was a fair process.” She declined to be more specific.

On the day Hazelton was approved by the school board, Hentell coincidentally was removed as principal by the board. Hentell, an Asian-American, filed a lawsuit claiming she lost her job because of racism and sexism in the district, but she later dropped the suit.

“I liked John personally,” Kallem said of Hazelton. “But I was reluctant to vote for him because of his situation at Montclair Prep.”

But to others on the committee, Hazelton was the most-qualified candidate, regardless of any past troubles.

Committee member Jeff Jonas, a head Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County, said he did a background check on Hazelton before voting for him. Jonas’ son, Jason, played quarterback for Burbank in Hazelton’s first season at the school in 1994.

Jonas strongly denied that his purpose on the selection committee was to serve as a mouthpiece for Hooven, as some believe. But he acknowledged that Hazelton was Hooven’s choice to become coach.

“I would not dispute that,” Jonas said. “The question is, did [Hooven] want Hazelton at the exclusion of everybody else? I wasn’t given that impression.”

Hooven, though, never hid the fact that he wanted to influence the hiring of coaches in the district. Tired of seeing Burbank football teams lose to their rivals in the Foothill League, he mapped out a course of action that would help Burbank and Burroughs become more competitive with Santa Clarita Valley schools Hart, Canyon and Saugus.

With successful programs, Hooven also believed it would be easier to keep home-grown talent from leaving Burbank to play for other high schools. He pointed out that two of the area’s top players last season--Hart running back Ted Iacenda and Notre Dame quarterback Ryan Bowne, played youth football in Burbank.

Neither Burbank High nor Burroughs has had a winning football season since 1987.

“I had a plan, and as a business owner, that’s what I do all the time,” Hooven said. “. . . I put together what I thought was an outstanding vision of where we needed to go, and I began to work on it.”

Hooven’s vision involved encouraging the administrators at Burbank and Burroughs to hire experienced coaches who were capable of turning around the struggling football programs so the “Foothill League championship would come through the two Burbank schools.”

As an example, Hooven cited his support of Gary Bernardi, who was hired as Burroughs’ football coach in 1993. The Indians were 5-6 in their one season under Bernardi, who left to take an assistant position at UCLA.

Sources said Hooven threw his support behind Burbank after Burroughs hired Dos Remedios. Hooven would not comment on his relationship with Dos Remedios, but it is widely believed he favored another candidate when the job was filled.

Reports differ on how Hazelton came to apply for the Burbank job.

Hooven denies he contacted Hazelton after Dave Kemp resigned as Burbank’s coach following the 1993 season.

Hazelton, though, told a school board subcommittee in January that Hooven lured him away from his previous job at Montclair Prep by promising a $42,000-a-year job as an activities director in the district. The post never materialized, and Hazelton, who has filed for bankruptcy, says he plans to sue the school district.

Hooven denies he ever made any promises to Hazelton.

Hazelton said he expects to receive from police tapes of telephone conversations he had with Hooven that will prove Hooven promised him a job.

“When I settle [with the district], I can tell you story upon story,” Hazelton said.

Jane Casey, Burbank’s booster club president and a member of the selection committee at the time Hazelton was hired as coach, says she regrets her role in the process.

“I’m not too proud of the fact that I was on that committee,” Casey said. “With all the scandal that followed, I feel rather badly. But we made what we thought was the best choice at the time.”

During the interview process to select a new coach, Casey said she was most impressed with Jim Clausen, who was to serve as co-coach with Hazelton.

But Clausen, who says he supported Hooven’s vision of striving for athletic excellence, left the program after only a few weeks and later took the job as head coach at La Canada High, where he has worked for the past two years.

Hooven said a rift developed between Clausen and Hazelton, causing Clausen to leave Burbank. Clausen would not comment on the matter.

Burbank enjoyed some success in its first season under Hazelton in 1994. The Bulldogs won three games and were involved in several close losses, including one to powerful Hart.

But the winless 1995 season can only be described as a disaster.

After Burbank lost its opener against Franklin, Hooven said he realized the team had not been properly prepared by the coaching staff.

“I went to that one game, and that was it for me,” Hooven said. “That’s when I realized it wasn’t going to work.”

Hooven also attended a few Burroughs games, including the Sept. 14 game against Bell-Jeff. It was at this game that Hooven and Burbank junior varsity coach Doc Johns were later accused by Dos Remedios of approaching a player in the stands who had quit the Burroughs team the day before. Dos Remedios charged that Johns tried to persuade the player to transfer to Burbank.

The alleged incident prompted Dos Remedios to write a letter of complaint to Southern Section Commissioner Dean Crowley, charging Burbank with a recruiting violation.

From there, the Southern Section and the Burbank school district jointly hired an investigator, former Crescenta Valley High Principal Sam Nicholson, to look into possible improprieties in the Burbank football program.

After a two-month investigation, Nicholson filed a report that concluded that several individuals connected to the Burbank program, including Hazelton and Hooven, “may have” exerted undue influence on several students to transfer to Burbank to play football.

The report also concluded that Hazelton “may have” used a tutorial service available to Burbank football players and run by Maureen Burke, his former girlfriend, as an inducement for two students to transfer.

Burke says Hooven told her he could arrange funding for the tutoring service through his friendship with Dumm, who controlled money as president of the Burbank Educational Foundation. Hooven, a former member of the BEF, said the independent organization contributes approximately $300,000 a year to Burbank schools through donations.

Hooven said he does not know Burke and never promised her money.

Hazelton, who denies recruiting players, resigned as Burbank’s coach in November and has since taken a job as an assistant at Berkeley High.

When contacted Wednesday, Berkeley Coach Mike Tuiasosopo said he was unaware of some of the problems that have befallen Hazelton, including the recent criminal charge. Hazelton coached two of Tuiasosopo’s brothers at Wilmington Banning High in 1987.

“I want to find out what the heck is going on,” Tuiasosopo said. “John Hazelton is a friend. I’ve been in a place of need myself. I hope I’m not a refuge for him. I don’t want my name rolling around in the mud.”

David Aponik, superintendent of Burbank schools, said the district will take measures to ensure that coaches and athletic personnel are more closely monitored. He blamed inconsistencies in administrative oversight for Burbank’s problems, pointing out that the school had four different administrators in charge of athletics during Hazelton’s two seasons as coach.

“I believe that’s where things fell apart,” Aponik said.

In November, Aponik reestablished the district’s Department of Pupil Services, which will oversee transfers and students attending Burbank schools on permits. He added that Southern Section officials will offer staff development seminars at Burbank and Burroughs to cover the subjects of recruiting and sportsmanship.

In addition, Aponik said he has sent a letter to the Southern Section offering to forfeit all of Burbank’s victories during Hazelton’s tenure.

“We’ve had some bumps in the road, but we think we’re on the right track here,” Aponik said.

Gary Willison, recently hired as Burbank’s football coach, also feels good about the future. Willison, a former standout lineman at Burbank and a three-year starter at USC, says the attitudes of the football players have changed dramatically since he took over more than a month ago.

“The first day, it was like walking into chaos,” said Willison, who was an assistant at Saugus and Canyon the past two seasons. “The kids had no self-respect, they didn’t trust anyone. I didn’t know what to think.”

Since then, Willison said, the players have come together in a common goal: to become winners without outside help.

“They want the team to be from within,” Willison said. “They don’t want Joe Montana, or whoever, to come in and help them. I think that worked against them in the past.”