Fredlow’s Good Deed Doesn’t Go Unpunished

Under unusual circumstances, Butch Fredlow, the Marina girls’ basketball coach, missed his team’s Sunset League game on Tuesday because he was ejected from a game earlier in the day while coaching the Vikings’ frosh-soph team.

Fredlow was ruled out of coaching in Marina’s 60-57 loss to Fountain Valley, because of a Southern Section bylaw that stipulates a head coach or assistant who is ejected “shall be disqualified from participating in the remainder of the game and will be ineligible for the team’s next contest.”

At issue, however, was whether that penalty would apply only to the frosh-soph schedule or would follow Fredlow to his varsity duties.

That decision was made by Speed Castillo, the officials’ liaison with the Southern Section, after he was contacted by Dale Miller, the official who gave Fredlow two technical fouls in the second half. Neither Miller nor Stan Kukla , the other official, work varsity-level games.

“It’s the next game [Fredlow] would have been involved in--that’s my interpretation,” Castillo said. “The rule is a little ambiguous. It’s something that rarely happens. When we meet with all the [state] liaisons, this will be one of my agenda items.”

Fredlow was on the sidelines only because the frosh-soph coach, Rob Westoff, resigned a day earlier, according to girls’ Athletic Director Shelly Luth.

Luth said it was a no-win situation. “Had Butch coached the varsity game,” she said, “the penalty would have been a forfeit and a two-game suspension, which we weren’t willing to risk.”

Fredlow said he was given the first technical foul following a dispute over where a ball should be taken out of bounds, when he added a comment about the discrepancy in fouls that had been called. He said he then suggested discussing the interpretation on the out-of-bounds play after the game and received the second technical, cause for automatic ejection.