Prep schools getting a little more respect

Some mainstays of the largely East Coast phenomenon known as prep school basketball -- private boarding schools that take fifth-year players as the athletes seek to enhance their college prospects -- will compete at Calabasas High today through Sunday in the first Stoneridge Holiday Prep Classic.

Stoneridge, a small, 40-year-old school in Simi Valley, is trying to make a go of it with a different approach after being banned from the Southern Section Division V-A boys’ playoffs in 2003 because of ineligible players and parting ways with former coach Ron Slater because of players’ academic shortcomings.

The new model is spearheaded -- and bankrolled -- by Mike Mahoney, a retired venture capitalist who lives in Manhattan Beach and has donated about $250,000 to fund scholarships, pay for cross-country travel and lease a large Simi Valley home for players from as far away as Senegal.

Mahoney said he grew interested in establishing a West Coast program after sending his son, Shane -- now a freshman at Lamar -- to a prep school in Pennsylvania as he tried to enhance his chances of receiving a scholarship.

“The notion came to me that there should be a prep school environment here. There should be an alternative to junior college,” Mahoney said.

Mahoney hopes the program will break even this year with a combination of scholarship players and players paying $25,000 in tuition, room and board and other fees. The school is seeking to raise money to build a dormitory.

Prep school programs drew the attention of the NCAA last year after reports of “diploma mills” -- where athletes were not earning the academic credit they received.

Since then, the NCAA has launched a certification program that has left some 25 schools unapproved, said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services. Stoneridge received approval in part because it is accredited by a major organization, the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, Lennon said.

“That’s one of our significant criteria,” said Lennon, adding that the problem schools typically have no accreditation or state oversight.

Bob Gottlieb, a former college coach and head of Orange County-based Branch West Recruiting Assistance Service, praised the Stoneridge program as the first of its kind in Southern California and for helping prospects earn scholarships.

Mychel Thompson, son of former Laker Mychal Thompson, is going to Pepperdine, and Charles Boozer, brother of NBA player Carlos Boozer, will go to Iowa State.

“I don’t know if Mike intends to make a great deal of money -- I don’t think he needs the money,” Gottlieb said. “It’s a labor of love.”

USC Coach Tim Floyd, who has been recruiting some of Stoneridge’s 7-foot international players, called the school “a whole new phenomenon” on the West Coast, comparing it to Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, where USC prospect Brandon Jennings plays.

“I know that it’s serving a purpose for a lot of young guys that had typically gone to junior college,” Floyd said.

Players who attend junior college lose a year of college eligibility, as opposed to those who attend prep school.

Five of the schools participating this weekend -- Stoneridge, South Kent and St. Thomas More from Connecticut, Brewster Academy from New Hampshire and a program called Boys to Men from Illinois -- were ranked among the preseason top 20 prep school programs. The sixth, Findlay Prep from Nevada, is playing prep school basketball for the first year.

“What’s happened in recent years is all these other schools have sprung up,” said Clark Francis, a Kentucky-based recruiting expert. “There are basketball factories in Georgia, Mississippi. Some of them are totally legit. Some of them, kids don’t know where the front door is.

“To label all prep schools as good or bad is wrong. You have to take each on its own basis.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com