Dead Set Against Dead Period : Preps: City-mandated two weeks off from sports during winter period has few supporters.

It is the middle of the high school basketball season, but for the last two weeks Tarryl Franklin, a center for Dorsey High, has been spending more time on the school’s track than in the Dons’ gym.

It is not that the 6-foot-6 junior does not want to play basketball, but he can’t because of the Los Angeles City school district’s new dead period for sports.

“The only basketball we get to play is when we go to a local park and play pickup games,” Franklin said. “When we are there we may play against people from all different high schools in the city, like L.A. or Manual Arts.”

The period was a two-week stretch, which started Jan. 6 and ran through Sunday, when teams could not play games and coaches were not allowed to have contact with their players.

The policy was created when the Board of Education decided to switch to a year-round school calendar, and because City school officials didn’t want coaches to work without pay during two weeks of the winter athletic season.

This left players to try to stay in shape while waiting for the second half of the season to begin.

“We tried to set up a schedule for the players that they run at least a mile a day and then do ten 100-yard sprints,” Dorsey Coach Kevin Gibson said. “But, I doubt if they’ve followed through. Kids will be kids, and if they aren’t pushed I really don’t expect them to do it.”

In its first year, the dead period policy has not won over many coaches. In a Times’ survey of 20 City coaches, not one was in favor of the two-week layoff.

“Originally, when this first came out, it was supposed to be a one-week dead period, and I don’t think anyone was all that upset about it,” Westchester boys’ Coach Ed Azzam said. “But when they told us it was going to be two weeks, the coaches said, ‘Wait a minute. What is this?’ I think a two-week dead period is just nonsense. It doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

Said Fremont Coach Sam Sullivan: “Having no practices at all is something different at this time of year. We gave our players index cards with a basic workout for each guy.”

Carson Coach Richard Masson added: “It’s just ludicrous, because you spend a couple of months trying to condition the kids and build them up to a certain level and then the Board of Education, in their infinite wisdom, says you can’t practice for two weeks.”

For teams such as Dorsey and Fremont, the break came at an inopportune time.

After being overshadowed by its football team in recent years, Dorsey made an impact on the basketball court in early season play. The Dons’ are The Times’ fifth-ranked City team with an 11-2 record, thanks to an impressive victory in the Artesia Tournament.

“The break definitely kills your momentum,” said Gibson, whose Dons will play Carson Wednesday. “If your team is on a roll, they no longer have that momentum. To me, it doesn’t make any sense, because the kids come back out of condition and can get injured with only three or four days of practice before playing a game.”

Fremont also was a hot team leading up to the dead period. The Pathfinders were ranked No. 2 in the City with a 17-3 record. Fremont lost twice early in the season to top-rated Westchester, defending City 4-A Division champion, but closed out the holidays on a roll.

In the nine days before the break, Fremont, the defending 3-A Division champion, played eight games and won two tournaments. The Pathfinders first won the tough Las Vegas Holiday Prep Classic by defeating Parkview of Little Rock, Ark., in the final, and then came back to defeat City powers Washington and Manual Arts en route to winning the Bell Tournament.

“Right before the break, we came together as a unit,” Sullivan said. “You can say that the break came along at a good time, because we had just played so many games and I thought we peaked a little. But, I didn’t want to be off two weeks. One week would have been fine.”

Not only were perennial City powerhouses hurt but also teams such as Harbor City Narbonne, whose coach, Bob Hoppes, believed his team was starting on the upswing after it won the four-team Hamilton tournament early in the month.

“I’ve heard nothing positive about this from any of the coaches I’ve talked with,” Hoppes said. “You do all the things you can to be competitive, and just about the time you have a finger on it, everything comes to a halt.”

Wilmington Banning girls’ Coach David DeLaby said he is worried that the layoff will hurt his squad significantly. The Pilots play Washington, the City’s No. 1 team, Wednesday.

“We don’t have a lot of depth, and I know that’s true for a lot of girls’ teams,” he said. “So I’m really concerned about the conditioning aspect of this. We don’t practice on Monday because of the holiday. So we come back and practice on Tuesday and play against the No. 1 team in the City the next day. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Washington girls’ Coach Phil Chase questions the City’s crackdown in restricting coaches’ contact with their players.

“If the rational for this (dead period) is money,” he said, “then, why don’t they let those coaches who want to put time in without pay do it? When it gets down to it, we are at an obvious disadvantage with other sections because they are still playing, while our players are getting out of shape.”

Coaches say it will be nearly impossible for officials to enforce the dead-period rule.

The only team that has been caught holding an illegal practice so far is the Narbonne girls’ basketball team, although the Gauchos avoided a penalty by agreeing not to repeat the action.

The coaches seem united in their opinions that the dead period is a bad idea. But the players don’t seem to mind.

Maybe Dorsey’s Franklin put it best when he said, “The first season is over and to (the players) nothing has changed. We play against the same guys all the time anyway, so having this time off doesn’t seem all that odd.”

Times Staff Writer Mitch Polin contributed to this story