No Winners : Questions Linger After Fear of Violence Forces Forfeit of Game

Nov. 1 was to have been a big night for Naeem Mills and his family.

College football scouts were going to have a look at Mills, a strapping 6-foot-4 tackle for Banning High School in Wilmington, when his team played Dorsey High School. His parents, Darleen and David Mills, know that a football scholarship is Naeem’s ticket to higher education.

But their fears of what might have happened if Banning played Dorsey in southwest Los Angeles proved stronger than their concerns about a scholarship.

During last year’s Banning-Dorsey matchup, the parents watched in terror as a phalanx of security guards, parents and coaches formed a protective circle around the Banning players and ushered them to safety after Dorsey fans rushed the field in protest over a referee’s controversial call.

“It was scary,” David Mills said, “because you know it could have gotten ugly.”

Compounding those fears were the two apparently gang-related shootings that recently erupted near Dorsey--one of which occurred during the closing minutes of a game against Crenshaw High at Dorsey’s Jackie Robinson Stadium.

Some might see more similarities than differences between Dorsey and Banning, which is located in a gritty industrial pocket in the southernmost tip of Los Angeles.

Still, considering the recent shootings and last year’s fight, Naeem’s parents were not willing to risk harm to him. So they backed Banning Coach Joe Dominguez’s decision to forfeit the Dorsey game. The parents figure that the scouts will have other chances to look at their son. They do not regret their stand.

The forfeiture drew national media attention, with reporters roaming the Banning and Dorsey campuses to paint a picture of a city so paralyzed by gang violence that even the innocent tradition of a Friday night football game has been ruined.

“It’s kind of a slap in the face . . . when your guests choose not to come to your house for negative reasons,” said Beverly Clarkson, Dorsey assistant principal. “I don’t know of a (high school) site that hasn’t had an incident of some kind.”

Angry city and school district officials held news conferences to denounce Banning, saying its refusal to play was hysteria that only served to brand Dorsey turf as unsafe and undesirable.

Though the Banning campus is settling down in the wake of the forfeiture, the controversy over safety at high school athletic events is not going away. Already, Banning baseball coach Phil Saavedra is talking about his reluctance to play on Dorsey turf in the spring. At its meeting Tuesday, the Interscholastic Athletic Committee for Los Angeles schools could consider penalizing Banning for refusing to play this month.

There is lingering resentment among some Banning backers who believe that they were unfairly branded as elitist.

Carol Sapp, a Banning counselor who has taught in Wilmington schools since 1958, said the impression created by the Banning-Dorsey flap was that it was a case of “the haves against the have-nots.”

High-rise incinerators and smokestacks separate residential areas from ocean waters and the wealth of the Port of Los Angeles. The acrid smells of refined petroleum and incinerated sewage waft over the modest stucco houses and aging shops on Avalon Boulevard, once the area’s main commercial street.

The canneries disappeared decades ago and the lines at the longshoreman’s hiring hall have dwindled since container shipping displaced thousands of dock jobs. More than 30% of Banning students qualify for free school lunches because of their low family incomes. Only 18.4% of Dorsey students qualify, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District.

And Latino gangs have been a fact of life in the area for decades. There are about 12 gangs there and gang activity is sharply escalating, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Socially and economically, Banning’s largely Latino student population and Dorsey’s mostly black population are far more alike than different. The two high schools suffer some of the same dismal educational results shared by schools in poor areas--dropout rates of 43% and low scores on state achievement tests.

For decades, football has been a potent source of identity in the blue-collar community Banning serves. When the football team was invited this year to play in Hawaii, the community went to work selling T-shirts and holding luaus in order to raise the $32,000 to pay for the trip.

Banning teacher Bill Flack said that when he was a student in Sapp’s seventh-grade class at Wilmington Junior High School, he wrote an essay saying his career goal was to be a coach at Banning High School.

“I knew all their names,” Flack said, recalling the awe in which younger guys held the Banning football team.

Intense football rivalry also has a long tradition in Wilmington. When Banning plays Carson High each year, there are so many fans the games are held in Veterans Stadium in Long Beach, which holds 20,000.

For a few years, police said, Banning played its home games in the Harbor College stadium, but that brought gangs members from east of the Harbor Freeway to the west side, where they encountered their rivals. After one game, shots were fired in the parking lot and Banning decided to hold its home games at Gardena High School.

The melee at last year’s Banning-Dorsey game was the worst, parents said. For months, Banning coach Dominguez worried about potential problems at this year’s game. He asked Los Angeles district officials to change the site of the game from Jackie Robinson Stadium near Dorsey to a neutral stadium.

During October, three Dorsey students were wounded in two shootings near the school. When district officials refused to move the game, Dominguez decided to forfeit the game.

The decision was supported by Cathy and Victor Garcia, whose son, Victor Jr., is Banning’s kicker. The Garcias were in the stands last year at the Dorsey-Banning game.

“It was an ugly fight,” said Victor Garcia, 36, who, like his father and uncles, played football at Banning. “I didn’t know whether to jump in and fight back to defend my kid or just stay up there and look on helplessly.”

Before the forfeiture, Banning had a 6-0 record. Many thought that the school was well on its way to winning a city championship for the first time in six years. That possibility made the decision to forfeit all the more difficult, Darleen Mills said.

“It was (going to be) our year,” she said.

Banning vs. Dorsey

Banning High School recently forfeited a football game to Dorsey High School out of fear it would end violently, as it almost did last year. Although the schools are in different parts of Los Angeles, they face many of the same problems, including gang activity and high dropout rates. STUDENT POPULATION Banning High: 2,794 Dorsey High: 2,023 DROPOUT RATE (1990) Banning High: 43.3% Dorsey High: 43.2% LA Unified District: 40.9% State Average: 20.1% STUDENT ETHNICITY (1990) Banning High Latino: 67.8% Black: 19.1% Anglo: 5.5% Filipino: 3.7% Pacific Islander: 2.4% Asian: 1.3% American Indian: 0.2% Dorsey High Black: 75.2% Latino: 22.8% Asian: 1.5% Anglo: 0.3% Pacific Islander: 0.1% American Indian: 0.1% Source: State Department of Education, Los Angeles Unified School District