Archdiocese of Los Angeles could have prevented Bishop Montgomery sports scandal
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There’s another Catholic school sports scandal underway, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles apparently was the only one who didn’t see it coming.
On Saturday, Bishop Montgomery in Torrance announced football coach and co-athletic director Ed Hodgkiss was no longer employed by the school.
In other words, he was fired.
He’s apparently going to be the fall guy for five Bishop Montgomery transfer students being declared ineligible by the Southern Section, multiple Bishop Montgomery suspensions imposed after players left the bench with 24 seconds left in a loss in Hawaii and Bishop Montgomery having to forfeit to No. 1 Mater Dei on Friday because of lack of players.
After weeks of turmoil in football program, Bishop Montgomery leaders announce Ed Hodgkiss is no longer employed by the school.
People in the Southern California football community have been talking about Bishop Montgomery for months as they saw one transfer after another welcomed to the school. Southern Section officials waited for weeks to receive the transfers’ paperwork. Five players were declared in violation of CIF bylaw 202, which includes providing false information.
If a school trying to rapidly improve its football program with shortcuts sounds familiar, it is.
In 2020, St. Bernard turned to former Narbonne coach Manuel Douglas, who won eight City titles. Douglas was forced out at Narbonne and didn’t coach in 2019 after a nine-month Los Angeles Unified School District investigation. Narbonne was banned from the 2019 playoffs and forced to forfeit its 2018 City title for use of an ineligible player.
Douglas later resigned in the spring of 2020 when he came under an FBI and IRS investigation over money received from a Narbonne booster to pay for a trip to Hawaii while coaching at Narbonne.
Bishop Montgomery received numerous football transfers in the offseason. The Southern Section has reviewed the paperwork and declared five players ineligible.
St. Bernard proceeded to drop its football program in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
This past week, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese wrote in an email in response to a request for an update about Bishop Montgomery, “The investigation is ongoing and there are no developments to share at this time. The school and the Department of Catholic Schools are in communication with the CIF Southern Section office as the investigation continues.”
Last spring, Bishop Montgomery’s new principal, Michele Starkey, was asked by The Times in a phone call, whose participants included new school president Patrick Lee, if she was aware of any involvement by the same Narbonne booster tied to Douglas’ resignation in Bishop Montgomery’s program. She said no.
The archdiocese should start its investigation right there. Players don’t start suddenly showing up from all over Southern California with no reason.
Longtime football coach Manuel Douglas, who guided the Gauchos to eight City Section titles since 2002, will resign and drop his lawsuit against LAUSD.
Lessons were not learned. Players from last year’s Bishop Montgomery team saw what was happening and transferred out. Maybe the Archdiocese should ask them what was happening.
A Bishop Montgomery parent wrote in a letter to The Times, “Returning players were demoted, excluded from trips or quit; Archdiocesan Catholic values appear secondary to short-term athletic exposure; despite my June outreach to the school, no reply ever came.”
Messages left for Hodgkiss and Lee on Saturday were not returned.
It’s another big mess for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to clean up, and it was very much preventable if lessons from the past had been learned.
