Transfers fuel rivals’ suspicions of Villa Park basketball success

The Villa Park High boys’ basketball program hadn’t had a winning season in 20 years when Kevin Reynolds took over as coach more than a decade ago.

“Basketball was not a priority here,” said Reynolds, a husky, independent auditor who is paid an annual stipend by the school. “Our mentality was that if we build up the program, kids will want to play for us.”

Reynolds’ vision has been realized with 10 Century League championships in the last 12 years, two Southern Section championship-game appearances since 1997, and an impressive list of graduates who have played for major colleges.

But that success has also prompted complaints about the tactics Reynolds and his staff have used to create an Orange County powerhouse.

Three rival Century League basketball coaches recently accused Villa Park of rule-breaking recruiting practices.

“Every year I compete against [Reynolds] and lose by six or seven points, and the difference repeatedly is the guys he brings in,” Placentia El Dorado Coach Ryan Mounce told The Times in an interview, where he was joined by Tustin High Coach Richard Bossenmeyer and Orange El Modena’s Ryan Schmidt. “We just want a level playing field. Kevin is unwilling to play at our level, and he’s thumbing his nose at [the California Interscholastic Federation].”

Two years ago, Bossenmeyer aired his concerns about Villa Park basketball in a two-page letter to the Southern Section of the CIF, citing the “cycle of transfers” -- eight players -- into the program between 2002 and 2006.

Reynolds denied breaking rules and said the Spartans’ 92-8 run in league play through 2006 led opponents to have a “misperception” about his program. “I’m proud of what we do, and I don’t apologize for our success,” he said.

Though it is rare for coaches to point the finger publicly at one of their own, accusations of rule violations are not uncommon in Southern California high school sports, where dozens of prominent athletes might change schools in a given year.

“I’d like to think most are simply rumors, but in the situations where there’s credible evidence, we ask for the public’s help to come forward with that information and we will follow up,” said James Staunton, commissioner of the Southern Section.

That doesn’t happen very often. Spokesman Thom Simmons said the Southern Section has disciplined no more than 10 cases of undue influence in the last 10 years -- though the penalties can be severe, including loss of playoff privileges or banishment from the section.

Villa Park has not been punished, but the section has expressed concern about transfer players using an extended-stay hotel near the school to meet residency requirements.

Section officials said the address of the Extended Stay America in Orange was given by former all-league point guards Kyle Johnson, in 2004, and Kertd Elisaldez, in 2006, and again last year in a transfer application by Huntington Beach Brethren Christian player Jeff Jefferson.

“We told the school our concerns were that kids from various locations -- Pico Rivera [Elisaldez], Cypress [Jefferson] and Sacramento [Johnson] -- had come to this same, one hotel,” said Paul Castillo, formerly the section’s assistant commissioner for basketball.

Castillo, who has since retired, said he informed Villa Park Athletic Director Tom Fox that he was “concerned about the use” of the hotel when it came up for a third time in the Jefferson application.

Villa Park responded by banning use of the hotel by athletes seeking a transfer. “It may be OK to do this by the letter of [high school federation rules], but we’ve declared it ineligible,” Principal Ed Howard said in an interview.

But the controversy surrounding Villa Park’s program didn’t stop there. Reynolds is facing questions about guard Zach Mills, who averaged 20 points a game last season for the Anaheim Esperanza freshman team.

Mills’ mother, Tracy, told The Times that she met privately on the Villa Park campus with Reynolds, and that he told her Zach “would fit right in” on his team.

Such a meeting would be a violation of high school undue-influence rules, Simmons said, adding that the Southern Section has “an interest in finding out more of the facts.”

Tracy Mills said in an interview that the meeting was arranged by Prince Cassell, the director of her son’s club team, after a conversation in which she expressed frustration with the direction of Esperanza’s varsity.

“I really wanted Zach to change schools and [Cassell] thought Villa Park was where he should go,” Tracy Mills said. “[Reynolds] did tell me that Zach would fit right in -- those were his exact words -- and I agreed with him. I liked knowing [Reynolds] is a hired gun who wants to win.”

Reynolds denied that a private meeting with Tracy Mills was arranged. Cassell, whose Southern California Aces use Villa Park’s gym as a home court, said he did not encourage Tracy Mills to seek a transfer for her son.

“She approached me,” Reynolds said, “and I told her she had to speak to my [athletic director] or assistant principal. . . . I told her, ‘I can’t talk about this.’ . . . She kept peppering me with questions. She initiated the conversation.”

Gary Meek, Esperanza’s athletic director, said he asked his coach, Jason Pietsch, to secure a letter from Tracy Mills detailing her conversation with Reynolds but was told, “She’s not going to do that.”

After learning of the situation from Meek, Villa Park officials contacted Tracy Mills and received a “very apologetic” e-mail from her in which she stated no school representative ever “contacted the son or initiated contact,” Villa Park assistant principal Sheldon Glass said.

Later, Tracy Mills maintained that she had a private meeting with Reynolds and that Cassell arranged it. “I know the truth,” she said. “I told the truth.”

But, concerned that an undue-influence violation might leave her son subject to a one-year suspension from athletics -- he is staying at Esperanza -- Mills said she wants to “step out” of further attention to the matter.

Speaking generally, not specifically about the Mills case, section Commissioner Staunton said, “Families should not be afraid to come forward to us if coaches are making overtures to them. We want the coach to stop, and if the parent is innocent the penalty falls on the coach and his school, not the kid.”

Reynolds said he knows he has critics and describes the Mills situation as “much ado about nothing.

“We’ve been down this road before,” he said. “We get an accusation, it gets researched and it’s a nonissue.”

What makes Villa Park an attractive destination, he said, “is that there’s 10 guys playing in college this year who played in this uniform.” Former Spartans include ex-Kansas and NBA player Eric Chenowith, Syracuse’s Sean Williams and Loyola Marymount’s Drew Viney. While Chenowith was a hometown player, Williams was a transfer and Viney’s parents moved into the area before their son’s freshman season after attending a Villa Park “open house” where they heard Reynolds pitch study halls, grade checks and “all the things a parent wants to hear,” Viney’s mother, Mona, said.

In his letter to the Southern Section, Bossenmeyer noted the more recent use of the hotel and argued that the addition of players from elsewhere “cannot be strictly accidental or by coincidence.”

Although a family may use an extended-stay hotel room as its valid address inside a school’s boundary as long as it has abandoned its former address, no member of a school’s staff may assist in the athlete’s residential placement.

Elisaldez’s father, Louis, said in a telephone interview that he was pointed to the hotel by a member of the Spartans’ coaching staff after he informed the staff that rent on homes and apartments in the school’s attendance area were out of the family’s price range.

Louis Elisaldez said the family paid $300 a week for a one-bedroom hotel room with two beds. Asked whether his son had been courted by Reynolds or any other Villa Park coach before he enrolled there, he declined to comment, noting that his son played for East Los Angeles College last season and retains hopes of landing a major-college scholarship.

Jefferson, the transfer applicant from Brethren Christian, was not coaxed toward Villa Park by anyone from the school, his father, Mark, said, adding: “I sought them out.” Johnson, the 2004 transfer from Sacramento, could not be reached for comment.

Meantime, Villa Park is coming off a rare losing league season and opposing coaches say they are wary of what could be coming next, pointing out that the Reynolds-coached Villa Park summer team that played in Las Vegas in July included point guard Timmell Thomas from the high desert town of Adelanto, and 6-foot-5 forward Tony Adams, formerly of Pomona Diamond Ranch High.

“Given [Reynolds’] history, you knew with Villa Park going 4-6 and with the players they had returning, that would not be the makeup of his 2009 team,” Bossenmeyer said.

El Dorado’s Mounce wants the section to perform a thorough investigation of all the allegations against Villa Park.

He said, “It’s hard in a world where you’re trying to teach kids there’s more to life than winning, to see the way the system works in this whole sport.”

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lance.pugmire@latimes.com