Forfeit Appeals Fall on Deaf Ears

A clerical error. It sounds so minor and seems so innocent. But as many high school athletes, administrators and parents have learned, the Southern Section sees a clerical error the same way it sees a blatant attempt to circumvent a rule.

Clipping is still clipping, unintentional or not. And noncompliance with the section’s open enrollment transfer rule (214-1 in the Blue Book) is noncompliance, no matter the circumstance. Laguna Hills, which forfeited five games and a chance to defend its section title by violating 214-1, learned that harsh reality Wednesday, when it lost an appeal to a three-member executive panel chaired by former section president Tom Triggs. An appeal by Villa Park, which forfeited three victories due to an ineligible player, also was turned down.

Later in the day, David Shores, an attorney hired by a group of Laguna Hills football players’ parents, announced he is filing suit today in Superior Court in Santa Ana to have the section’s ruling overturned. Shores, who hopes the case will be heard Friday, realizes history is not on his side.

A Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order in 1989 voiding a section ruling that caused Huntington Beach to forfeit eight victories for using an ineligible player. Two days later--a day before Huntington Beach was scheduled to appear in a playoff game--a three-judge panel in the 4th District Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling, knocking the Oilers out of the playoffs.

That is the only time the courts have come close to overturning a section ruling on eligibility.

“I know the history, but I’m very hopeful we can get a judge to see the fairness of the situation,” Shores said.

The situation is this: A Laguna Hills player, living in the Laguna Hills’ attendance area, attended Capistrano Valley last year for the fall semester of his freshman year. He left Capistrano Valley after one semester and transferred to Laguna Hills. He became a starter this year at Laguna Hills, but school officials never filed the open enrollment transfer.

Laguna Hills Principal Wayne Mickaelian discovered the error and reported it last week.

“It’s a good rule and it needs to be enforced, but I think each case has its individual merit,” Mickaelian said. “I think a lot of people don’t understand the true impact of it until they go through it. Now that I’m going through it and looking at it, I’m saying, ‘You know what? This is not right. It has to be modified.’ ”

Southern Section Commissioner Dean Crowley agrees with Mickaelian and others who believe the rule’s punishment of forfeiting all victories in which the ineligible athlete played is too severe.

“Whether it was intentional or not, the bottom line is the youngster wasn’t eligible,” Crowley said. “I’ve advocated that a forfeiture is too harsh a penalty. But I don’t make the rules. The schools make the rules.

“There’s two levels of eligibility. One is when the kid shouldn’t be playing no matter if there is paperwork or not. Then there’s the paperwork snafu. Every year this comes up and every year I tell these schools, ‘You guys need to come up with another less severe rule for a paperwork snafu.’ ”

Villa Park Principal Fran Roney agrees and she’s planning on doing something about it. Villa Park’s football team also felt the sting of the open enrollment transfer rule this year. A Villa Park player attended Mater Dei last season and transferred back to Villa Park over the summer. Because the player had always lived in the Villa Park attendance area, Roney said she forgot to file paperwork to complete his open enrollment transfer.

Fortunately for the Spartans, Roney discovered the glitch early in the season and Villa Park’s forfeiture of three nonleague games did not affect its playoff chances.

“I’ve come up with a term for all this ‘states of eligibility,’ ” Roney said. “You either are eligible or you’re not. Some kids are ineligible even if the paperwork is done. If the student would have been eligible if not for an adult error, then he and his team should not be punished.”

Roney said she will submit a proposal to the section through the Century League to “separate these types of problems.”

“For now, we have an existing rule and we need to go by it to uphold the integrity of the CIF,” Roney said, “but at the same time, you need to work within the system to change the existing rule if it doesn’t work for all of us.”

What does Roney propose? She suggested sanctions against the head coach, a one or two-game suspension, or a fine against the school. Crowley said a fine had been proposed but never went anywhere.

“Maybe you penalize them over the last game that the ineligible player was used, instead of for all the games,” Crowley said. “I plan to bring that proposal to the Blue Book Committee in March.”

Mickaelian said he hasn’t thought of a less severe way to penalize a school for a paperwork snafu. He simply knows the current method isn’t right.

“The punishment doesn’t fit the crime, though I think ‘crime’ is a very harsh term,” he said. “If I stepped outside of all this, I would just like to come up with a process where this doesn’t happen again.”

There is ‘loophole’ that could have allowed Laguna Hills to compete in the playoffs. If Mickaelian had discovered his clerical error two weeks later, the Hawks would have been eligible for the playoffs.

“Once we’ve got your entry [into the playoffs], you’re locked,” Crowley said. “We passed that rule a few years ago. Taking teams out of the draw and re-seeding everything just created too many nightmares for us.”

Crowley said in 1987 a league title and playoff spot was taken away from South Pasadena.

“Every year, I’d get a call from this little old lady, the mother of this South Pasadena kid who was ineligible because of a paperwork snafu,” said Crowley, who was assistant commissioner then. “She’d say, ‘Did they change the rule yet?’ And every year, I’d tell her that nobody had bothered to do anything about it.”

Friday night, Mickaelian will attempt to persuade the other five principals in the Pacific Coast League that his school’s team deserves to be taken as the league’s third-place team despite its record.

There is a precedent for such an action. In 1978, Baldwin Park was voted a third-place spot by the Montview League after its first-place season was ruined for using an ineligible player.