Summer’s Shopping Specials

It’s give-and-take time for high school coaches.

The coming and going of athletes this summer is moving along at warp speed. Blink once and your star quarterback could be gone. Blink twice and you might lose your All-City basketball guard. Blink three times and the quarterback could be back.

At San Fernando High, the football and basketball teams have lost three potential starters to Alemany, a Catholic school in Mission Hills.

Jason Tubbs, Reggie Kinlaw and Bryson Atkins have enrolled at Alemany so they can play for their club basketball coach, Darryl McDonald, the newly hired Alemany coach who was a San Fernando assistant last season. They join guard Byron Joseph, formerly of Village Christian, who already has checked in.

A fourth San Fernando player, All-City guard Devin Montgomery, also has applied to transfer to Alemany.

An Alemany administrator said it will cost each player close to $5,000 in tuition and other expenses to attend Alemany just so they can play for McDonald. As long as the players’ families are paying, the transfers are perfectly legal.

For these players to transfer en masse is quite a tribute to McDonald, who takes over a program that was 1-23 in Mission League play over the last two seasons and doesn’t have a gym.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction of Alemany parents will be when their sons lose starting positions to the new players in football and basketball. Will the parents keep quiet if the team wins? Will they complain if the team loses? How many transfers will it take before administrators at Alemany say, “Enough”?

Hey, these days sports mean everything, so good luck, Alemany.

As if the exodus at San Fernando and stampede of athletes arriving at Alemany isn’t intriguing enough, how about the circus revolving around All-City guard Gilbert Arenas?

Arenas still attends Grant, according to his father, Gilbert Sr. But Sylmar Coach Bort Escoto apparently doesn’t care, because Escoto used Arenas last week when Sylmar’s basketball team won the War on the Floor tournament at Chatsworth High.

Arenas was the ultimate ringer. And the War on the Floor was transformed from a high school tournament into something more resembling a recreation league showcase. Sylmar won. Big deal. The Spartans wouldn’t have won without Arenas.

Was it wrong for Arenas to play for Sylmar while he’s still enrolled at Grant? Not by today’s standards.

“There’s nothing illegal with what [Arenas is] doing,” said Barbara Fiege, the City Section commissioner. “It’s really the way of the world these days. It’s school shopping.”

Not illegal, but not right either. Coaches shouldn’t allow athletes to play on different teams during the summer to see what school they want to attend.

Arenas was unhappy that Grant Coach Howard Levine didn’t have the Lancers playing a tough summer schedule, so he started playing for Sylmar. My hunch is Arenas will return to Grant in September. Sylmar is a longshot at best. His father has no intention of moving, and Arenas isn’t likely to enter Sylmar’s math-science magnet program for his senior year. He’ll end up at Crenshaw before he ever plays a real game for the Spartans.

The real news last week was that Arenas achieved an NCAA-qualifying score of better than 900 on his SAT, clearing the way for big-time colleges to start offering scholarships.

Escoto isn’t the first City Section coach to open the proverbial Pandora’s box by allowing a high-profile athlete to switch teams in the off-season. But Arenas is the most visible athlete yet to openly shop for a new school, and it’s provoking sharp pains of disgust in the stomachs of veteran coaches.

“It’s an unstable situation for coaches,” Chatsworth basketball Coach Fluke Fluker said. “I think coaches are afraid to discipline their kids because they’re afraid their kids will run to another school.”

The time has come for coaches to make a stand. This is high school sports, not college or the pros. Teenagers should not be permitted to influence a coach by threatening to transfer.

Thankfully, there are coaches bucking the trend.

Consider the new philosophy of San Fernando football Coach Sean Blunt.

“If you don’t want to be a Tiger, there’s the door. Don’t let it hit you on the way out,” Blunt said.

Two weeks ago, San Fernando won the Beverly Hills passing tournament led by quarterback Larry Brown and receiver Terrell Stanley, two former Cleveland players who transferred back to San Fernando, their home school.

“The whole Valley knows where to grab kids--come to Pacoima,” San Fernando assistant Tom Hernandez said. “We lose them all over, but we’re still strong. We have a lot to offer. The grass always looks greener, but it’s greener where you live.”

Chatsworth’s Fluker said if any of his players want to leave, “I’ll help them fill out the paperwork.”

“I’m not going to let some 15-, 16-year-old kid blackmail me,” Fluker said. “My job is not predicated on my win-loss record. This is high school, not college. A large part of my job is developing young men.”

Hernandez said San Fernando has moved on since the departure of three football players to Alemany.

“They’ve been replaced,” he said.

*

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.