Masters’ Negative a Positive

Here we go again, Monte Brooks thought, more rehashing of “The Incident.”

More talk about an unpleasant chapter in the history of The Master’s College baseball program, the kind of thing Brooks and others on campus would rather forget.

As Brooks put it, he wants to move forward, not look back.

He wants to focus on the program under his care, a program that last year was seriously jolted and has been rekindled, Brooks says, by the grace of God.

Which, religious beliefs aside, is a sensible posture to take.

The Mustangs are a young, almost entirely new team linked to the past only by institutional lineage, a couple of veteran players and Brooks.

They don’t need the distraction, the reminders, if they are to forge ahead.

But they, and most everyone else, can benefit from what happened because it’s a lesson in integrity worth reviewing.

In a nutshell:

Last April, after several Master’s players were caught viewing sexually oriented material on the Internet, the school quickly canceled the last nine games of the season.

The team finished 14-20-2 and Coach Jack Mutz stepped down to become assistant athletic director in a move the school said was unrelated to the incident. Brooks, a former minor leaguer, was promoted to head coach after two seasons as an assistant.

For many schools, the episode would have been a significant embarrassment. For a fundamental Christian college, it was a crushing blow to the core of its foundation.

When word got out, and after the jokes ran their course, people reasoned that The Master’s could not have reacted differently without compromising its integrity.

Maybe so, but ethics, proper conduct and moral values are routinely trampled by schools apparently more interested in dollars and championships than tarnished reputations.

Take a look around.

Countless athletes with checkered backgrounds attend colleges and universities simply because they can throw a football, dunk a basketball or clobber a baseball.

But character? Well, that’s another story. Some of these guys have more voluminous police blotters than transcripts.

Sometimes, when the insanity boils over and the public gets wind of athletes committing rape or shoplifting or doing 90 in a 35-mph zone after 10 beers, schools have to own up to their bad apples.

Far too many times, though, problems that don’t make the front page are swept under the carpet and life goes on at the schools, with nobody being the wiser.

The Master’s admitted, without mentioning details, that players had broken school rules and took an honorable step. By doing so, the school gained credibility and laid the ground work for a baseball team this season that, although not highly gifted, has more on the ball than many programs.

Brooks has his hands full with a 21-man roster that features only four seniors. Most of the players on the team last year, including the ones involved in the incident, graduated or transferred.

But Brooks says these Mustangs, who are hosting a tournament through Saturday, are his type of players.

“We have kids who are committed to the institution’s standards,” Brooks said.

About that, Brooks could talk all day.

*

Not far from Master’s, at College of the Canyons, women’s basketball Coach Greg Herrick was still baffled Wednesday by the absence from the team of sophomore point guard Kyetra Brown.

Brown, the state’s leader in assists with 256, has missed Canyons’ past four games. She has told an assistant coach that she was treated at a hospital about two weeks ago for dehydration unrelated to basketball.

She failed the past few days to provide Herrick with medical clearance to play and did not contact the coach directly.

“I don’t really know the story and might never know it,” Herrick said. “We are concerned for Kyetra. A doctor supposedly advised her not to play for a while.”

Canyons, ranked No. 2 in the state behind Ventura, is 28-4 overall and 11-0 in Western State Conference Southern Division play after clobbering Santa Monica, 132-33, at home Wednesday night.

Herrick, who calls Brown the best point guard he has coached, wants to be on the safe side.

“There are procedures that need to be followed before she can play, for her benefit and for our benefit,” Herrick said. “Until we get the proper information, we can’t be justified having her on the floor. I know it sounds rather bizarre.”