CRITICAL CONDIDTION

When football coaches from the Golden League meet to exchange tape, it’s not necessarily videotape.

Five of the six schools in the Antelope Valley-based league operate without athletic trainers, leaving coaches to tape ankles, diagnose injuries and ponder the possibility of litigation brought on by the absence of qualified personnel.

“We are time bombs just waiting to go off,” Littlerock football Coach Jim Bauer said of the liability issue.

Says a coach who requested anonymity, “If a kid gets seriously hurt . . . we all have cellular phones. The unwritten rule is to dial 911, stand back and don’t touch him, then pray for the best.”

Golden League rules stipulate that a doctor be available at all league varsity football games, but one is not mandatory for lower-level games or at practices.

Each member of the league--which is comprised entirely of Antelope Valley Union High School District schools--has a stipend of at least $1,600 per athletic season available to hire part-time certified athletic trainers.

In most cases, the money is never claimed.

“We would love to have trainers,” said Darrell Havens, vice principal and athletic director at Quartz Hill and a former league president. “The problem is, we can’t find them. They’re just not there to be had.”

Rather, they’re not available at the district’s price, said Mike West, who represents California, Nevada and Hawaii in the National Athletic Trainers Assn.

“They just can’t afford to live on a wage like [$1,600 per season],” said West, a full-time trainer at Chino Hills Ayala High. “Nobody is asking for $50,000 a year, but to ask for $25,000 to $30,000 a year isn’t asking too much. You need to pay something commensurate to the amount of schooling and training required to be a certified athletic trainer.”

To become certified by the NATA, a trainer must have a bachelor’s degree, complete extensive post-graduate work, serve more than 1,000 clinical hours under the supervision of a certified trainer and pass a series of examinations.

Starting salaries for full-time trainers in the Chino Unified School District, where West works, is $23,000. Trainer salaries begin at $29,000 in Hawaii, where all public high schools are required to employ a full-time certified trainer.

The William S. Hart, Conejo Valley and Glendale school districts also do not require certified athletic trainers at their schools. But calls to several schools within those districts revealed that most make arrangements to have trainers on their sidelines for varsity football games. Valencia, from the Hart district, has two part-time trainers who attend games and two practices a week.

Typically, a trainer’s responsibilities include first aid, preventive taping, supervision of rehabilitation and caring for helmets and other equipment.

Lancaster High is the only Golden League school to employ a trainer, but Orbin Love is certified by the American Trainers Assn., an organization that has less stringent requirements than the NATA.

As it is, there are few complaints.

“That’s all we’ve ever known, so we have come to trust the coaches,” said Ben Smith, a lineman on Littlerock’s football team.

Said Marilyn Johnson, the mother of Palmdale defensive back Shane Johnson: “[The lack of certified trainers] is not a concern of mine. The coaches are quite good at recognizing injuries. I have never had a problem.”

But coaches concerned about liability predict a less forgiving climate will accompany news of the first serious injury.

“Somebody’s going to get badly hurt, a lawsuit is going to come down and the money that is going to go out is going to far outweigh the money that is being saved,” Highland football Coach Lin Parker said.

Jan Medema, the director of risk management for the Antelope Valley district, and Assistant Superintendent David Vierra did not return phone calls for this story.

Occasionally, an injury interferes with important decision-making during games.

When Antelope Valley High defensive back Chasio Gaines suffered a dislocated shoulder against Sylmar, it was Coach Brent Newcomb who popped the shoulder back into place.

A doctor on the Sylmar sideline--the Los Angeles Unified School District requires medical personnel at each varsity football game--was busy attending to an injured Sylmar player.

“And I can tell you that wasn’t the first shoulder I’ve had to put back in,” said Newcomb, who missed the fourth quarter of the game while working on Gaines.

With the score tied and Newcomb busy helping Gaines, Antelope Valley assistant coaches decided to attempt a desperation pass rather than try a long field goal to win the game.

“I probably would have made the same decision,” Newcomb said of the choice to pass. “But it would have been nice to have the opportunity to make that decision.” The pass was intercepted and the game finished in a 14-14 tie.

Ironically, had the game been played at Antelope Valley instead Sylmar, the situation might have been reversed. The Sylmar coaching staff would have been left to tend to its injured player while a doctor helped Gaines.

Antelope Valley High hasn’t had a certified trainer working regularly on its sideline since 1989, when district budget cuts prompted the departure of trainer Greg Kreitz, the most recent full-time trainer in the district.

Kreitz is a health teacher at Lancaster. He is allowing his trainer’s certification to lapse.

Given their situations, Golden League coaches are trying to educate themselves in recognizing and treating injuries.

With the help of Dr. Daniel Massari, a Lancaster-based chiropractor, and Antelope Valley College trainer Jerry Lewis, the league conducts regular seminars and workshops covering topics such as neck and head injuries.

Every coach in the league is certified in CPR and first aid, which is standard for high school coaches.

But such basic skills don’t compensate for the absence of a doctor or certified athletic trainer, experts say.

“With no trainers, coaches are often asked to do things that, from a medical standpoint, they have little or no training or experience to perform,” said Dr. Richard Ferkel, an orthopedist who is a team doctor for Valley College and Harvard-Westlake, Crespi and St. Francis high schools. “These bad stories are more common than we would like to believe.”

In the past, budget-strapped City Section schools were generally considered the have-nots, where trainers were rare and a luxury.

However, recent trainer programs have supplied schools in the Los Angeles area with certified trainers for Friday varsity games, City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege said.

Ayala and Hesperia are among Southern Section schools to initiate programs for high school student trainers.

Palmdale had a student program through its medical magnet school. Student trainers from Palmdale would fan out across the Antelope Valley to assist at games of rival schools.

“I’d turn around on the sidelines and there were these kids in Palmdale jackets,” Highland’s Parker said.

But the magnet school eliminated the program, and Palmdale has had difficulty finding trainers.

“We haven’t had our own [certified] trainer for at least five years,” Palmdale Coach Jeff Williams said.

So, $1,600 sits unclaimed at five Golden League schools.

“We can’t even use that money to purchase more protective equipment,” Parker said. “When the season is over, that money goes back into a general fund.”

Even at Lancaster, where there is a certified trainer, there is uneasiness.

“We need even more medical protection on the sidelines,” Lancaster Coach Ray DeShane said. “Mainly, we need an ambulance. If someone goes down, we can’t afford to wait 20 or 30 minutes for someone to get there.”

DeShane witnessed such a scene last year when a Lancaster player suffered a head injury in a game at Palmdale.

At about the same time, a Dominguez High player suffered a serious leg injury during a game at Antelope Valley High.

In each case, an ambulance arrived in about 25 minutes.

Less help is available during practice, where a study by the NATA found that injuries were 61% more likely to occur.

There is no state rule requiring home football teams to provide doctors, much less trainers.

“The feeling is that it’s not the state CIF that should be making these decisions, but the local schools and districts,” said Fiege of the City Section.

Football officials in the region are instructed not to allow games to begin without medical personnel. But that rule seems to be open to interpretation.

Southern Section games have been played with only a podiatrist on the sideline. City Section games can begin with a nurse present.

Harvard-Westlake, a private school, employs three full-time certified trainers--two for its high school campus and another for its junior high.

St. Francis recently created a new staff position for a full-time trainer. Additionally, the school plans to begin a CPR training class for students.

The advantages of hiring a trainer have been noticeable in recent weeks.

Last month, two Antelope Valley players suffered severe leg cramps, but were left unattended behind the team bench, stretching on their own.

Across the field, host Bishop Amat had the luxury of two trainers on its sideline.

The result was most evident in the second half, when Bishop Amat extended a 20-12 halftime advantage to a 41-20 victory.

Earlier this month, Capistrano Valley trainers prepared their players for a nonleague game at Littlerock while the team’s coaches took care of last-minute details.

Down the hall, Littlerock’s coaches had just finished taping their players.

“We have two coaches who specialize in taping ankles and another who is our expert on wrists,” Bauer explained. “Hey, it’s not a perfect world.

“So you just deal with it.”

And so they did. Littlerock won, 30-7.