Reversal Will Take a Valiant Effort

Even as he tries to cradle the phone and a wailing child in his arms, John Yakel is a man at peace.

In June, Yakel ended a three-year term as athletic director at St. Genevieve High in Panorama City, moving on to become a teacher and baseball coach at Mary Star of the Sea in San Pedro.

Yakel has few regrets over his departure, the latest for a school that has experienced high turnover in its athletic department in recent years.

“I may have been on the payroll until the end of June but the last day of school was my last day on that campus,” Yakel said.

“The only saving grace about being [at St. Genevieve] is a great faculty and the kids are pretty good.”

Yakel, 31, left frustrated by the politics and administrative details at a school with an enrollment of less than 500 students and limited on-campus athletic facilities.

Under the watchful eye of St. Genevieve Principal Maria C. Denis, Yakel, his coaches and even school secretaries were instructed to limit or deny comment to the media.

“That was pretty much the policy,” Yakel said.

“It was something that just developed in the last year and a half.”

Tom Alvarez, Yakel’s replacement as athletic director, said things are changing for the better at the school.

Alvarez said he has been pleased thus far with the interaction between Denis and the athletic staff, and said Valiant coaches are being allowed to talk with the press.

“I think [Denis] has loosened up a bit,” Alvarez said. “When I took the job I told her we needed to be the first ones to provide information.”

New football Coach Steve Page, a 1971 St. Genevieve graduate who played on the school’s 1970 Southern Section A Division football championship team, said he initially was wary of the school’s recent troubles, but that didn’t deter him for leaving Notre Dame High for the head coaching post.

[The school’s] been down for a long time and they haven’t been given a lot of publicity,” he said. “It’s been traumatic with the turnover of coaches.

“But I’d rather be in a situation where the program is kind of down because there is no place to go but up.”

Page also will be the school’s development director and will attempt to rebuild relations with alumni and revive the athletic booster club, which was disbanded without explanation in 1992.

“Ms. Denis, Page and myself are committed to improving our athletic programs,” Alvarez said.

Yakel declined to discuss Denis specifically. But he talked about other factors that have tarnished the Valiants’ athletic image.

Chief among the hot spots is the football program, which was 7-23 the past three seasons.

Page, a former Notre Dame assistant, is the team’s fifth coach in 3 1/2 years.

Richard Fong was the school’s athletic director and football coach until being fired from the former position and resigning from the latter in 1994.

Jeff Trovatten, the first coach on Yakel’s watch, was fired in February 1995 amid allegations that hazing occurred under his supervision.

Yakel was quoted in a newspaper story saying an alleged hazing incident “did happen.”

He later refused comment to The Times on the alleged incident and said Trovatten was not rehired because of a “difference in philosophy.”

Asked Monday about Trovatten’s dismissal, Yakel said he acted as instructed by school officials.

“There were some things I would have liked to have done differently but couldn’t,” Yakel said.

Bill Connor took over for Trovatten and resigned in April to coach at Garden Grove. He was replaced by James Sims, who resigned in July to coach at Torrance Bishop Montgomery.

Yakel said St. Genevieve’s proximity to more impressive parochial schools such as Notre Dame, Alemany and Chaminade hurts its chances of attracting quality coaches in all sports, not just football.

“At St. Gen’s you don’t get to pick the quality of people for coaching positions,” Yakel said. “If they’re young, they’re enthusiastic but not super-qualified and [St. Genevieve is] where they make their mistakes. Or they’re older and no one else wants them.”

Raymond L. Doyle is an example of the latter. A retired Los Angeles police detective, Doyle resigned as a three-sport coach at St. Genevieve in December 1995 after pleading guilty to a charge of filing an unauthorized police report.

Coaching problems arose again last school year when first-year boys’ soccer Coach Grant Sawyer resigned during the season, causing the team to forfeit the remainder of its schedule.

Yakel was unable to hire a girls’ soccer coach until several days after the season began.

“We advertised for two months and got very little response,” Yakel said.

Yakel points out that other small schools have problems hiring quality coaches, something he said his replacement, Alvarez, will discover in time.

“He won’t do any better or any worse than Fong or I did,” Yakel said. “It’s just a place where it was unclear to me which direction they want the athletic department to go.”

Here’s hoping the Valiants stick with the only decent option: up.