Fontana Kaiser Coach Arrested

Damon Mark Carpenter, the girls’ basketball coach at Fontana Kaiser for five years, has been arrested on suspicion of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old female student at the school, police said Tuesday.

Carpenter, 35, was arrested by Fontana police on school grounds Monday. He is being held at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on suspicion of unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation and sodomy.

Police spokesman Mark Weissman said authorities learned of the allegations from the girl’s mother. Weissman declined to say whether the girl was a member of the Kaiser basketball team.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office will receive the police report today and determine whether charges will be filed.

Carpenter has compiled a 55-57 record at Kaiser and his teams have appeared in the Southern Section playoffs four times.

Marvin T. Sawyer, legal counsel for the Fontana Unified School District, said Carpenter doesn’t teach classes at the school but is paid a yearly stipend to coach the varsity girls’ basketball team.

Sawyer said a walk-on such as Carpenter is subject to the same scrutiny during the hiring process as a teacher at the school; that all teachers and coaches in the district must submit to a criminal background check and fingerprinting before being hired.

Contracted on an annual basis, Carpenter received his final paycheck for the 2003-04 school year on April 9, Sawyer said.

“He is not currently a district employee,” Sawyer said.

Sawyer said he was uncertain if, before Carpenter’s arrest, the district had intended to renew his contract to coach for the 2004-05 season. Kaiser finished third in the Sunkist League last season with a 13-13 record.

Lance Pugmire

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Baseball

The Moorpark baseball team, ranked No. 25 in the Southland by The Times, will again be without its best player, Jason Breckley, when it travels to No. 13 Thousand Oaks today for a Marmonte League game.

Breckley, a senior pitcher-right fielder, sprained his ankle on first base after making the final out against Agoura on April 7. The injury appeared serious enough that Breckley was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

“It’s a big loss,” Coach Scott Fullerton said.

Breckley threw a four-hit shutout against Thousand Oaks on March 17, giving the Lancers their only loss in league play this season.

Fullerton said he expects Breckley to miss another week or two. Moorpark is 4-3 in league play.

Dan Arritt

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Boys’ basketball

Chris Madigan, a former coach at Fountain Valley, has been named to replace Randy Held as coach at Bellflower St. John Bosco.

Held resigned last month after two seasons, having guided the Braves to the 2003 Southern Section Division II-AA championship. He will become an assistant at Santa Ana College.

Madigan didn’t coach last season after three years at Fountain Valley.

Eric Sondheimer

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Tennis

Kaes Van’t Hof of Santa Ana Mater Dei and Santa Barbara’s Blake Muller are seeded Nos. 1 and 2 in the California Interscholastic Federation boys’ singles division of the 104th Ojai Valley tennis tournament.

Muller faces Mark Perez of Sun Valley Poly at 8 a.m. and Van’t Hof meets Stefan McKinney of Rio Mesa at 9:30 a.m. in first-round matches on Thursday.

Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley’s Jared Kamel and Aj Ahluwalia are seeded second in the federation’s doubles division and will face Andrew Nguyen and Ronald Nguyen of Fountain Valley at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday in the first round.

Celia Durkin of Woodland Hills is the top-seeded player in the Girls’ 18 singles division and draws a first-round bye. Ariana Fahrney of Santa Ana and Laura Robinson of Orange are the top-seeded team in the Girls’ 18 doubles division and also have a first-round bye, as does second-seeded Lyndsay Kinstler of Downey in the Girls’ 16 singles division.

Elia Powers

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Miscellany

To help close a projected $80,000 shortfall in next year’s budget, the Southern Section Executive Committee is expected to approve a fee of $10 per sport, per school when it meets at 1 p.m. today at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

The fee has been widely expected and met with little opposition when discussed at last month’s council meeting. It would add $10 to 23 cents per student schools have received since 1986.

Also today, the committee, which oversees the largest of the state’s 10 geographic sections, is expected to recommend membership for a dozen new schools. That would make 14 new members this year and increase the section to 555 schools.

-- Paul McLeod