Section Rule Change Forcing More Coaches Out the Door

John Cyrus read about the resignation of Garden Grove boys’ tennis coach Kevin Starnes on Wednesday and knew it was only a matter of time before someone would come looking for his reaction.

Cyrus wasn’t close to Starnes, but he could certainly empathize with him. After all, Cyrus left his tennis coaching job at El Dorado for essentially the same reason Starnes left Garden Grove--the new Southern Section rules governing tennis drove him out.

“I needed a little bit of a change,” said Cyrus, now coaching boys’ basketball at Esperanza. “The rules just weren’t quite right. I don’t think anybody coaching tennis is trying to get an unfair advantage.”

But that’s what the Southern Section thought was happening when it limited tennis coaches’ access to players, in April, 1995, to a five-week period over the summer and a sixth-period physical education class--thus keeping uniformity in all sports sanctioned by the section.

“If they wouldn’t have changed the rule, I’d have never thought about getting out of tennis,” Cyrus said. “You don’t want to cheat. But when you can’t do what you really want to do, why bother? Why should I be frustrated like that.”

Neither Cyrus nor Starnes coached at schools where players could afford private lessons, so they needed the off-season to work on improving their players’ games.

Tennis powerhouses such as Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor weren’t affected as much by the new rule because they field teams consisting mostly of club players. But to coaches like Starnes and Cyrus, the off-season was an opportunity to play catch-up.

Since the new rule was passed in 1995, Cyrus and Starnes could no longer give their players private lessons on the side and they saw their programs falling further behind the elite ones.

Starnes resigned Monday, ironically so he could spend more time teaching his players tennis. He said he will try to improve the Garden Grove program from the outside by offering former players private lessons for $1.

“We had developed everything at Garden Grove, the team concept, the camaraderie, the family unit,” Starnes said, “Everything except being able to compete with the best teams.”

Starnes said he owed it to his former players to try and take them to the next level.

“I had a coach at La Quinta [Bruce Smith] that helped me,” Starnes said. “I want to help them the way he helped me. We had a section championship at La Quinta and I want other kids in this area to be able to experience that too.”

Cyrus, who resigned shortly after the boys’ season, understands Starnes’ decision.

“What Kevin is doing is a just thing,” said Cyrus, who still teaches tennis at a court in his backyard. “Why should you be penalized for trying to make a difference in a sport that is an underling to other sports? For having a positive effect on a kid’s life and for keeping him out of trouble? Tennis gives a kid a reason to come to school and to improve themselves. We’re not just making better tennis players, but better people.”

So how can the section possibly not see what Starnes and Cyrus see?

“An institution and bureaucracy as big as the CIF, they got so large, the individual doesn’t matter,” Cyrus said.

Tim Mang, who coaches the boys’ and girls’ programs at Corona del Mar, said the section is losing some of its best tennis coaches in striving to gain uniformity among the sports. Starnes was The Times Orange County coach of the year in 1995 and Cyrus was in 1996.

“I talked to Bill Clark [Southern Section associate administrator in charge of tennis] about Cyrus leaving and he said, “Well, the guy’s giving up $2,000 bucks a year,” Mang said. “I said, ‘Bill, you just don’t get it, do you?’ If it came down to money, none of us would be in coaching.”

Clark was in a meeting with other section administrators Wednesday and nobody could be reached for comment.