Finding Ways to Cross the Great Divide

In high school, as at any level of competition, there are haves and have-nots.

On one side of the divide, coaches dress players in the trendiest sweats and shoes and purchase the most sophisticated video and technical equipment. Teams produce glossy programs and yearbooks, create sophisticated websites, broadcast games on the Internet, switch from grass to all-weather fields and put up large electronic scoreboards.

Then there are the programs left behind, those with hand-me-down equipment, fields in disrepair and uniforms more suitable for a YMCA scrimmage.

People power, not just money, separate the haves and have-nots. Often, a person or a group of people go the extra mile to make sure their athletes have the best of whatever there is to offer.

Here are a few of their stories:

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Sitting atop a John Deere grass mower, 82-year-old Charlie Hatfield is almost incredulous when asked if there are any weeds protruding from the outfield grass at Chatsworth High.

“No way,” he said. “I keep it clean.”

There are country club putting greens not as pristine as Chatsworth’s outfield grass. And just imagine how the more precious infield is treated.

Hatfield mows the field five days a week as a volunteer baseball coach. Three other Chatsworth coaches mow, water and fertilize the field as if it were a palace garden. They offer no excuses for even stopping by on weekends to keep the grass cut and green.

“I would like to have the best of everything,” Coach Tom Meusborn said.

Chatsworth finished 35-0 this season and won its second consecutive City championship. Last season, the Chancellors were 33-1 and ranked No. 1 in the nation by Baseball America magazine.

Except for a short backstop, Chatsworth’s field has everything a high school coach, player or fan could want: a $22,000 scoreboard, a new sound system, weather covering for fans in the bleachers, a snack bar, a clubhouse built from a trailer with customized wooden player lockers and a 55-inch television.

Each year, Chatsworth raises at least $20,000 by selling Christmas trees, holding a bowling night and selling ads for a team yearbook. The team has five sets of uniforms and travels to Las Vegas for a tournament in a chartered, air-conditioned bus.

“A lot of people will say, ‘How come the baseball team gets everything?’ ” Meusborn said. “We don’t. We work for everything.”

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It wasn’t long ago that an electronic scoreboard was No. 1 on a high school baseball coach’s wish list. Before that, coaches wanted block dugouts, a Bermuda grass infield, a pitching machine and batting cages.

Clubhouses are the latest rage, and Placentia El Dorado has set the standard for excellence. Its $125,000 air-conditioned structure, built in 2002 with the help of a $60,000 donation from major leaguer and alum Phil Nevin, includes plush carpet, a stereo system and individual lockers made of Formica.

“If you’re going to do it, do it right,” Coach Steve Gullotti said. “There’s a bit of a competitive nature with high school coaches. They see our facility. They see how much the kids enjoy it. It sets a tone, and they want to have the same thing.”

El Dorado’s baseball program raises more than $30,000 each year to pay for facility and program improvements.

“If you want to keep building up your program, you’re going to have to fundraise,” Gullotti said. “There’s not enough money in the school budget to pay for it.”

A scoreboard and digital video system are the next items on Gullotti’s wish list. A sound system was put in for this season.

Not far away from El Dorado’s baseball field, a refurbished softball field has been completed, thanks to donations.

Wider dugouts and an extended cut-out dirt infield have upgraded the facility considerably. Parents wanted El Dorado’s field to equal those of Century League rivals Villa Park, Brea Olinda and Anaheim Canyon.

“We decided we needed to do something so we felt special,” Coach Garrett Yoshina said.

El Dorado has 15 booster organizations that raise funds for individual boys’ and girls’ sports teams. The school has 16 paid football coaches, half paid for by district funds and half by booster funds.

“What drives coaches and parents to raise money is they want to make the experiences for their kids better,” Athletic Director Carl Sweet said.

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Don Morrell’s field of dreams was a weed-covered patch of cracking asphalt next to the swimming pool and tennis courts at Anaheim Katella. For six years, he lobbied three different principals to give him the chance to build a first-of-its-kind on-campus golf facility.

As the boys’ golf coach for a school that had never won a Southern Section championship, Morrell was able to rally the community behind the simple cause of creating a facility to help teach golf.

Once approval was given, 15 businesses donated services and materials worth $80,000. The 180-foot enclosed facility opened in May 2002 and includes a 25-by-40-foot artificial putting green, a sand trap, eight hitting cages, a small clubhouse and an equipment shed filled with donated putters, irons and balls.

“I always wanted a place to teach the short game,” Morrell said. “I kept dreaming. You have to knock on doors and go to the people who you think can assist you.”

Morrell’s neighbor, Zane Cannaday, a project manager for an Irvine construction company, led the way in persuading electricians, concrete mixers, masons, a demolition specialist, a lumber company, a grading company and others to come together on a project that had nothing to do with winning championships and everything to do with giving students the opportunity to learn golf.

“All these other contractors jumped on the opportunity to do it,” Cannaday said. “It was because those kids at Katella and neighborhoods like it never have a chance to play golf. I wanted to do something good for the kids.”

Now, not only does the golf team use the facility, but so do P.E. students and faculty members.

Shawn McLaughlin, a junior on the Katella golf team, said he would not be playing golf if not for the facility.

He was taking an early morning chemistry class two years ago, started to hang out at the golf center and got serious about the sport.

“I can come in before school, during lunch, after school,” he said. “It’s just put together great.”

Morrell, a longtime science teacher at Katella, marvels at how an area once used for horticulture has been turned into a golf oasis, complete with half a dozen palm trees.

“This used to be ugly,” he said. “Now, it’s ‘Wow.’ It relaxes people when they see this.”

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Oxnard Rio Mesa, which never had a pool since the school opened in the fall of 1965, unveiled a $2.2-million facility this spring.

The pool is a shining example of parent power.

It might never have happened except through the efforts of three “pool moms” who spearheaded a four-year drive that raised more than $330,000 through grants, business and private donations, and booster-club funds with gifts ranging from $5 to $50,000.

“These women are amazing,” Rio Mesa girls’ water polo Coach Keith McKnett said. “Rio Mesa’s been talking about getting a pool for 30 years, and these women got it done in about two years.”

Debbi Owens and Janine Burdine have sons on the Spartans’ swim and water polo teams who will graduate this month, and Tina Morrison’s son, Corey, is a former Rio Mesa swimmer and water polo player who graduated last year.

They formed the Rio Mesa Community Swimming Pool Project Committee in 1999 and spent much of two years doing research that included viewing and photographing school pools and filtration systems up and down the California coast, as well as attending Oxnard Union High School District board meetings.

“It was like, ‘We’ll build you a pool if you bring us a million bucks,’ ” Owens said. “I left no stone unturned, and low and behold, money just started coming in and coming in.”

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Sometimes, when the worst situation looks unchangeable, someone comes along who is determined to make a difference. Hollywood’s football team is an example of a program that is trying to get better in the face of daunting obstacles.

There are 39 languages spoken among the 3,100 students at Hollywood, where 75% of them receive free meals at breakfast and lunch as part of the Title I federal aid program for low-income children.

In its 100th year, Hollywood is at Sunset and Highland, next to one of Los Angeles’ most famous tourist destinations. Its athletic fields are clean and well-kept, but, as football Coach Jeff Trovatten said of his competitors, “They’re in the computer age and we’re still working in the typewriter age.”

Hollywood has lost 32 consecutive football games. When Trovatten arrived in May 2002, the weight room was a shambles, with mostly broken equipment. There was no booster club, no video camera to tape games, no sixth period in which to condition players and no lights on the football field. He had two part-time varsity assistants.

The team hasn’t won a game in Trovatten’s two years as coach, but the weight room is now stocked with donated and purchased equipment, and another weight area on top of a roof next to the tennis courts is under construction. “We’ve gotten to the point where the weight room isn’t an excuse,” he said.

There’s still no booster club, but Trovatten used his own money to buy a camera, brought a TV from home to show tapes and started a game program that sells ads.

He established a study hall to cut down on academic ineligibility. After starting with 33 players last season, he was down to 21 by the last game. Thirty-five are in the off-season training program this year.

“The biggest concern I had was would the kids give up,” Trovatten said. “But the kids don’t quit.”

He has discovered there’s much to do that has nothing to do with coaching.

“If you come in and think all you’re going to do is coach, you probably won’t be successful,” he said. “Fundraising definitely has to be part of the job.”

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com