Transfer of star basketball player Ian Boys has Simi Valley High . . . : Under Scrutiny

Ian Boys, the latest in a lineup of basketball players to transfer to Simi Valley High, did so, his parents and legal guardian say, because of a financial hardship.

Rival coaches have their doubts. They believe Boys’ transfer is yet another calculated move that results in the rich getting richer.

In the past three years, Simi Valley has benefited from an influx of high-profile players from outside the district, boosting an already solid basketball program into a powerhouse.

In 1995, Pero Vasiljevic, a 6-foot-9 exchange student from Australia, stayed with the family of a Simi Valley player and played his senior season for the Pioneers amid suspicions that he was funneled to the school rather than placed randomly. The Southern Section looked into the matter, but didn’t discover any wrongdoing.

Last year, the Pioneers’ fortunes were boosted by the arrival of Rafael Berumen, a 6-8 sophomore from Pomona, and Branduinn Fullove, a 6-4 freshman from Canoga Park. Berumen’s family moved to Simi Valley and Fullove was able to play for the Pioneers by enrolling at Santa Susana, the district’s magnet school.

Bobby Fullove, Branduinn’s father, recently moved his family to Simi Valley and has assumed legal guardianship of Boys, a 6-7 senior who was the leading scorer and rebounder for Buena High last season.

The chain of events rankled several coaches, who suspect that California Interscholastic Federation rules pertaining to undue influence are being violated in an effort to build Simi Valley into a team capable of contending for Southern Section and state championships.

“I suspect plenty, but that’s neither here nor there,” Agoura Coach Bill Sanchez said. “But it stinks to high heaven, I know that.”

Said Channel Islands Coach Gary Abraham: “Simi Valley’s main players did not grow up there. I know a number of coaches are concerned about that.”

Simi Valley Coach Dean Bradshaw says his program is being unfairly judged by critics.

“We know everything is on the up and up,” Bradshaw said. “People are allowed to move. That is what has happened with two very good basketball players [Berumen and Fullove] who are at our school.”

Bradshaw declined comment on Boys’ situation. To play for Simi Valley this coming season, Boys will need a hardship waiver from the Southern Section.

The Southern Section on Monday received a hardship request filled out by Bobby Fullove on Boys’ behalf. Southern Section Commissioner Dean Crowley said it will probably take a week to 10 days to investigate the case before the section makes a ruling.

“We want to be sure everything they’re saying is true,” Crowley said.

The Boys and Fullove families have known each other for years through their sons, who periodically played together on youth all-star teams. Berumen also played in the same circles.

Sue Lepisto said her son Garrett, a junior at Agoura, played on a traveling team in 1994 that also included Boys, Fullove, Berumen and Brett Michel, a Simi Valley sophomore who, like Fullove, started for the varsity as a freshman last season and helped the Pioneers to a 23-4 record and a share of the Marmonte League title.

Lepisto, an assistant principal at Taft, said Bobby Fullove was one of the traveling team’s coaches and Jim Michel, Brett’s father, put the squad together.

Several coaches believe Bobby Fullove and Jim Michel have worked behind the scenes to help build the Simi Valley team, which returns four starters led by Berumen, The Times’ Ventura County player of the year.

Fullove denies he is anything but a well-meaning father. Branduinn Fullove will be a 17-year-old sophomore by the time the basketball season starts. Bobby said he had his son repeat the eighth grade for “social” reasons.

Brett Michel also repeated the eighth grade for reasons not related to academics.

“For somebody to say that [I’ve recruited players for Simi Valley], they are giving me more credit of having an impact on people’s lives than I do,” Bobby Fullove said. “I don’t have any influence on where someone wants to move. They decide those things on their own.”

Exactly who decided that Fullove would become Boys’ legal guardian isn’t clear.

Bobby Fullove said it was “the Christian thing to do.”

Eric Boys, Ian’s father, said the decision was placed “in God’s hands.”

“The Lord made someone available out of this chaos,” Eric Boys said.

Julie Boys said the reason the eldest of her five children is living with another family is simple.

“There is a hardship in our family,” she said. “End of story.”

Eric and Julie Boys filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 13, about a month after Fullove was appointed Ian’s legal guardian.

The Boys’ four other children, ranging in age from 6 to 15, continue to live with their mother in a two-story house in Ventura owned by the family and assessed at $159,000 in 1996.

Eric Boys, who no longer lives in the home, said his wife has filed for divorce. He blames himself for the family’s financial troubles.

“I mismanaged,” he said. “I’m guilty.”

Eric Boys said Ian is better off living with the Fulloves for now.

“[Ian] was not in a situation that was conducive to his future,” Eric Boys said. “He needed to be out of the home.”

Administrators question why Ian was placed with the Fulloves rather than with a relative. Coaches are skeptical of the Boys’ financial plight. If the parents are strapped for cash, school officials wonder, how did they afford to send Ian on a $1,400 trip to Germany this summer with a student group from Buena?

Julie Boys declined to answer how the family paid for the trip.

Eric Boys is a longtime car salesman at a car dealership in Ventura, where he said he works on commission. Julie Boys runs a vending-machine business out of the family home, according to public records.

An inquiry placed to the car dealership revealed Eric Boys has been the dealership’s top salesman for at least the past three months.

Susana Arce, an assistant principal at Nordhoff and a member of the Southern Section executive committee, said the Boys family will have to prove an “unforeseeable, uncorrectable

and unavoidable” situation before being granted a hardship waiver that would allow Ian to play basketball at Simi Valley.

“There are very few true hardship cases,” Arce said. “You generally go to the school where your parents live unless there are compelling circumstances. . . . The [Boys case] is a little suspect. More than a little suspect.”

Glen Hannah is convinced of that. The Buena basketball coach has little doubt that Ian Boys transferred to Simi Valley because of basketball.

“Both parents swear it’s financial and they’re having all these problems but it’s like I told Eric Boys: ‘If the Fulloves live in [Port] Hueneme, we don’t have this conversation,’ ” Hannah said.

Circumstances surrounding Boys’ transfer left Hannah feeling bitter and used. He believes he was among the last coaches in Ventura County to find out that Boys was leaving Buena.

Bobby Fullove became Boys’ court-appointed guardian on July 8, a Tuesday. Boys continued to play summer basketball for Buena through the following weekend without telling any of the Bulldog coaches of his intention to change schools.

Meanwhile, news of Boys’ impending transfer was a hot topic of conversation among coaches at the Channel Islands tournament.

“I heard it from a couple of coaches who are close to Dean [Bradshaw],” said Abraham, the Channel Islands coach. “Dean flat out told them, ‘Hey, I’m getting Boys.’ Not to pick on Dean, but I think the CIF needs to straighten it out.”

Buena assistant coach Craig Williams was asked if the rumors were true at his birthday party on July 12. He called Hannah, who contacted Ian Boys the next day, a Sunday.

“I asked him, ‘Where are you going to school next year?’ ” Hannah said. “He said Simi. . . . That’s when I found out about the legal custody.”

Hannah said Boys gave a litany of reasons for the transfer, many of them basketball related--he’d be playing with a better group of players, he’d have a better chance to win a section championship and he’d be seen by more college scouts.

Disappointed and angry, Hannah wasn’t in a good mood when Boys showed up the next day at Buena wanting to participate in the varsity’s workout.

“I took two deep breaths and said, ‘Ian, I have to do what’s best for our program now, and what’s best for our program is that you not come back,’ ” Hannah said. “He just turned around and left.”

If Boys’ hardship request is turned down by the Southern Section, Bobby Fullove speculated that Ian could live in Simi Valley and play basketball for Buena.

“He wants to play where he’s eligible,” Bobby Fullove said. “Until that is determined, you’re putting the cart before the horse.”

But Hannah said Boys returning to Buena’s team won’t be an option as long he is coach. He said all but two of Buena’s players voted not to allow Boys back on the team if the hardship is denied.

“A couple said they would quit if that were allowed to happen,” Hannah said. “I wasn’t going to let [Boys] come back anyway but I wanted to see how the players felt, just in case it should arise.”

Jaime Castellanos, Buena principal, wrote a letter to Dennis Rast, Simi Valley principal, in July requesting Simi Valley investigate Boys’ transfer. Rast said he has complied with the request but would not reveal his findings.

John Crow, athletic director at Agoura, said Rast addressed Boys’ transfer during a meeting of Marmonte League principals and athletic directors last week. Rast said Boys legally had a right to attend Simi Valley but his athletic eligibility was still in question, Crow said.

From all indications, Rast, in his second year as principal, is trying to change Simi Valley’s image. He put his credibility on the line last spring by telling league administrators he would monitor any new athletes coming to his school.

His pledge was needed to convince Marmonte schools to allow athletes from Santa Susana to play sports in the district.

League administrators threatened to revoke that privilege after Branduinn Fullove enrolled at Santa Susana and drew Simi Valley for athletic participation instead of Royal, the district’s other high school, in a lottery. The magnet school does not offer athletics.

Sanchez, the Agoura coach, suggested coaches take matters into their own hands if administrators don’t take steps to ensure fairness.

He said a possible measure would be for Buena and other Channel League schools to boycott playing Simi Valley in basketball.

“If the Simi Valley administration cannot do anything and the CIF cannot do anything, then we as a fraternity of hard-working coaches can perhaps try to keep Ventura County from becoming a San Fernando Valley,” Sanchez said. “Every summer you hear about all these transfers [in the Valley] because they have open enrollment. . . . It’s like free agency in pro sports.”

Simi Valley came close to getting another high-profile basketball player this summer through the magnet program. But Scott Borchart, a 6-6 freshman from Thousand Oaks, drew Royal in the lottery and instead enrolled at Chaminade.

Chaminade’s coach, Jeff Young, is a close friend of Bradshaw’s and a former assistant at Cal Lutheran, where Bradshaw went to college and played basketball.

“If I was a parent and wanted my kid to play for a good program, Dean Bradshaw is the coach I’d want him to play for,” Young said.

Royal Coach Larry Wiksell doesn’t argue that, even though his program has been reduced to the proverbial second banana compared to Simi Valley.

“Dean Bradshaw is a great coach,” Wiksell said. “I don’t think he did anything illegal. At least not anything you can prove.”

But Wiksell doesn’t envy his cross-town rival. In fact, he says the imported talent that frequently finds its way to Simi Valley’s door doesn’t bother him at all.

“I focus on my team,” he said. “Right, wrong or indifferent, what’s happened [at Simi Valley] has happened, whether or not it was done through loopholes. My attitude is, more power to them.

“They have to live up to the expectations now. It might not be as easy as it looks.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

UNDUE INFLUENCE

According to Southern Section rules, undue influence is any act, gesture or communication (including accepting material or financial inducement to attend a CIF member school for the purpose of engaging in engaging in CIF competition regardless of the source) which is performed personally, or through another, which may be objectively seen as an inducement, or part of a process of inducing a student, or his or her parent or guardian, by or on behalf of, a member school, to enroll in, transfer to, or remain in, a particular school for athletic purposes.

Violation of this rule may cause the student to be ineligible for high school athletics for a period of one year and shall jeopardize the standing of the high school in the CIF.