Bench the Lawyers, Let the Kids Play Ball

Two stereotypes are on the table today. Which one is closer to the truth?

a) The Catholics cannot be trusted, not when it comes to operating high school sports programs in an ethical, high-minded and evenhanded manner. Give them an inch--they’ll take a mile. Give them miles and miles from which to draw their enrollments--they’ll take all your best athletes.

b) Orange County has too many yuppies with too much money and too much idle time for their own good.

Hint: Five Orange County high school districts have hired a heavyweight Costa Mesa law firm to appeal a process that used to require only a show of hands, biennial Southern Section releaguing.

And it had been such a good year for the CIF (Courts Instead of Football), too. There hadn’t been a lawsuit yet. A year ago, the CIF spent $150,000 defending itself against irate parents of teen-agers denied their constitutional right to appear in a high school playoff game, but thus far in 1991, the CIF had slashed those expenses, once the light bulb finally went off.

No forfeitures, no lawsuits.

What a concept, let’s run with it.

Now, however, the high school districts of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Saddleback Valley and Tustin are in a dither over the Southern Section’s latest vote on releaguing. Perhaps you have heard the frenzied cry: “The Catholics are coming! The Catholics are coming!” Beginning in 1992-93, four Orange County Catholic schools--Mater Dei, Servite, Santa Margarita and Rosary--have been approved to join three Orange County public school leagues, inducing all sorts of mental and emotional anguish on the part of the public schools and, consequently, the phone call to Rutan & Tucker, Attorneys at Law.

The public schools don’t want the Catholic schools because the publics are confined to their specific enrollment-area boundaries and the Catholics are not. In theory, the Catholic schools can accept students from anywhere within reasonable driving range, thus giving them an unfair advantage when assembling athletic teams.

That doesn’t explain how Mission Viejo High gets Marcellus Chrishon, the star running back on loan from Arizona, and world-class swimmers from Eastern Europe, but that wasn’t outlined in the five-district complaint.

Stan Thomas, commissioner of the Southern Section, has suggested that Orange County catch up with the 1990s and the rest of the country. All over the map, public and Catholic schools coexist in the same leagues and on the same playing fields, and have done so for years. Orange County is the last of the holdouts.

Orange County, meanwhile, counters that the rest of the country hasn’t had to catch up with Mater Dei.

The public schools haven’t forgotten, nor forgiven, the Mater Dei reign of terror during the early and mid-1980s, when an instant basketball dynasty was erected and flaunted in their faces. Pat Barrett reeled in the players, Gary McKnight ran up the score and “undue influence” suddenly became a buzzword in local sports sections.

Barrett and his posse of traveling all-stars are long gone, but the stigma from those dark ages remains. The public schools claim their protest isn’t simple paranoia. Firsthand, they have already experienced all of their worst fears.

Hard times can make for strange bedfellows, however, and not even Orange County is recession-resistant. Budgets have been squeezed, entire academic courses have been trashed, minor sports programs are in jeopardy. Given the current financial constraints, which makes more sense--Santa Margarita burning gas for a two-hour round trip to Loyola for a league game, or hopping a couple of off-ramps to play Woodbridge?

None of this matters to the Orange County Five movement, spearheaded by Saddleback Valley district Supt. Peter Hartman. Budget crunch, what budget crunch? Find us the best lawyers money can buy and tell the taxpayers we are fighting for their interest, to preserve truth, justice, the American way and competitive balance within the South Coast League.

So, this Friday, the legal team from the Costa Mesa firm of Rutan & Tucker will take the public schools’ case to the state CIF board. If thwarted there, the state judicial system is the next stop and Thomas says he fully expects the issue to reach the courts.

It is an extravagant waste, but that’s only half of it. Consider that the members of the Anaheim, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Saddleback Valley and Tustin school districts are also members of the Southern Section. Paying members. Thus, in effect, the five districts are footing the bill for both sides--plaintiff and defendant, our attorneys and theirs.

We’ve got a good case . . . and so have we.

The height of absurdity? No, Orange County and its high school sports crossed that point long ago. It was another lousy byproduct of the rock-headed 1980s: The games were wrestled away from the kids and thrown to the adults, with their fax machines zipping off protest letters to the editor (“Why wasn’t Johnny player of the week?”) and their cellular phones set to speed-dial the family lawyer (“Why can’t Johnny transfer? We’ll sue their butts.”)

Do the kids ever get a say in any of this? Ask them if they care if Servite gets its players from Brea and Fountain Valley can’t. If they go to Fountain Valley, the main thing they care about is the time of the Edison game.

A two-year trial is just that. Cease the depositions. See if it works.

Judging from the hypersensitivity out there, the Catholic schools will be scrutinized like never before. The checks-and-balance tracking system will be on red alert.

How does the old joke go?

What do you call 200 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?

A good start.

Nothing so drastic needs to be suggested here. Let the lawyers live. Just keep them away from the varsity.