It Becomes Test of Priorities

Usually, it’s none of my business when parents make decisions that affect their sons or daughters, but when those decisions have an influence on a high school sports team, it becomes fair game for public discourse.

There’s nothing strange about parents injecting themselves in their child’s athletic experience. That’s a given. Rarer is parental intervention for academic reasons.

At North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake, three starters on the football team missed a road game against Littlerock two weeks ago after their parents decided their sons needed to rest in preparation for taking the SAT the next morning.

Harvard-Westlake was 4-0 at the time and ended up losing to Littlerock, 28-7.

Harvard-Westlake is regarded as one of the most prestigious private schools in California. Its reputation for academic excellence is unchallenged. It also has won many sports championships, most notably in basketball, volleyball, water polo, tennis and soccer.

Trying to have it both ways, with a commitment to athletics and academics, can be difficult. It requires compromises and the juggling of responsibilities.

There are plenty of coaches at other schools who would have given the three football players two choices: Either play or don’t come back.

Not Harvard-Westlake football Coach Greg Gonzalez. “It was a personal decision parents made that I supported,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez didn’t have a choice. If he wants to coach at Harvard-Westlake, he must take into consideration the school’s academic emphasis.

Outsiders will rightly assume that the players’ decision not to play showed a lack of commitment toward football. On the other hand, who can second-guess this kind of parental intervention?

Alex Meyer, a punter and starting defensive back, said it wasn’t his choice to miss the game.

“There was a small squabble at home,” he said.

His parents made the decision to make him stay home based on past experience. His older brother faced a similar issue of having to take the PSAT the morning after a football game and didn’t do well on the test.

“It’s not a matter of studying,” Meyer said. “It’s a matter of rest.”

Harvard-Westlake’s school bus returned from Littlerock at 11:30 p.m. The SAT was given at 8 a.m. the next morning. Meyer said he went to sleep before 10:30 p.m. and felt refreshed when he took the test.

The reaction from teammates ranged from resentment to disbelief to laughing it off as a joke.

“They think it’s ludicrous,” Meyer said.

Some seniors played in the game and still took the SAT. Meyer scored 1,430 on an earlier SAT and wanted to improve on that score.

“Football is a top priority,” he said, “but college is above that.”

Dealing with the conflicting priorities of athletics and academics makes Harvard-Westlake a challenging place to coach. Players sometimes miss practices for symphony rehearsals or extended academic labs.

“I still think there can be a happy medium,” baseball Coach Tim Cunningham said. “It’s simply different. Oh, God, it’s different, but in a positive way.”

Peter Hudnut, the son of headmaster Thomas Hudnut, was an All-American water polo player at Harvard-Westlake and Stanford. He now serves as an assistant water polo coach at the school. He said he left his SAT early just to show up for a water polo game when he was in high school.

“Nobody on my team missed a game for the SAT,” he said.

Gonzalez said next season, he’ll try to make sure Harvard-Westlake doesn’t have a long-distance road game the night before the SAT.

Maybe he should have come up with a compromise this season, offering the players a chance to leave at halftime. It’s a tough call, but parents don’t deserve criticism for choosing academics over sports.

As for the players making peace with their parents, Meyer said, “If I get into a [good college], I’ll forgive them.”

*

If the football season ended today, Larry Toner of Anaheim Servite would be the coach of the year, not only because his team is 6-0 but also because he had the courage to try something new.

For more than two years, Toner and his offensive assistants have been studying the no-huddle, four-receiver, shotgun formation run by Corona Centennial. This season, Toner went to it.

On Saturday night, that offense produced 35 points against Los Angeles Loyola, the most points given up by a Cub team since 1995. Most important, the offense separates Servite from the other run-oriented schools in the tough Division I Serra League, which could result in big dividends for the Friars.

Toner, who has been coaching at Servite since 1970, said the offense fits his school’s personnel.

“We don’t need behemoths to drive it down field,” he said. “I have to be happy with it. As long as the offensive coaches are happy with it and continue to grow, we’ll stay with it. We’re still in the situation of learning it.”

The offense has been a boon for players such as sophomore running back Ken Ashley and receiver Matt Reinert, both of whom are flourishing.

With anything new, however, there can be setbacks. One week earlier, Servite didn’t score a touchdown on offense against Huntington Beach Edison. But its performance against Loyola showed the offense’s potential.

Credit goes to Toner for his boldness.

“Everything is a risk,” he said. “We didn’t do it summarily. We looked into it.”

It was the right call and the reason he’s the coach of the year at midseason.

Eric Sondheimer can be reached at

eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.