Three Catholic Schools to Play

Three private Catholic high schools will participate in football games tonight despite a recommendation from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to cancel or postpone all athletic events.

Describing it as an attempt to return to normalcy after Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, La Canada St. Francis, Pasadena La Salle and Bellflower St. John Bosco will follow through with scheduled football games.

On a day designated by President Bush as a day of national prayer and remembrance, schools will show sympathy and support for the attack victims during pregame ceremonies, administrators said.

The decisions made Thursday came amid a day of rescheduling, reshuffling and, in some cases, cancellation of athletic events for today and Saturday. The Orange County Department of Education, which represents 64 public schools, postponed all athletic events. Several schools in the region switched games to Saturday while others that were left without an opponent scheduled new games.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles faxed a letter to its 29 member schools Wednesday requiring that they cancel all extracurricular events, ranging from football games to after-school dances. The archdiocese also requested that 22 other private Catholic schools in the counties of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura cancel their games, though compliance is not mandatory. The three Catholic schools that decided to play tonight were among those schools.

“This disaster has continued to unfold and become worse, not better,” said archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg. “While there’s a lot of discussion about being strong, we still need to respect the lives that have been lost while also allowing time for those people to grieve.”

Bush, who plans to visit New York today, will call on Americans to use their lunch breaks to go to places of worship to pray for victims and their families.

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, criticized European soccer authorities for allowing eight Champions League matches to be played Tuesday. Matches were postponed Wednesday and Thursday.

“Certainly what we’ve tried to do is maintain some semblance of normalcy at a time that is very abnormal,” said St. Francis Principal Tom Moran. St. Francis will play host to Crescenta Valley in nearby La Crescenta, at 7:30 p.m.

“We feel that this is an opportunity to build the community, and the relationship we have with Crescenta Valley is something that is all about community. We felt we had a commitment to them when we signed a contract with them several years ago.”

Perennial football power Los Angeles Loyola, also among the 22 schools, decided it would not play today at Harbor City Narbonne, a member of the City Section, which also decided to cancel all athletic events for the rest of the week.

“In respect and reverence for those directly affected by something like this, we really felt it would be incongruent if we said life could go on as usual,” Loyola Principal William Thomason said. “While the rest of the nation is still grieving we thought we should too.”

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, a private Catholic school that does not fall under the direct jurisdiction of the archdiocese, canceled its game today against Westlake Village Westlake. The decision was “based on the directive sent out by the archdiocese,” Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin Rooney said.

Officials at Pasadena La Salle listed many reasons for deciding to play today at San Marino.

“One of the big issues was that it wasn’t a home game,” Principal Patrick Bonacci said. “We had to be sensitive to the time and resources that San Marino put into the preparation of the game. If the game had been a home game for us, the decision very likely would have been different.”

Bonacci said a poll of La Salle players “was unanimous” in expressing desire to play today. Bonacci also said a final decision to play came hours before the president’s declaration.

The other private school playing tonight is Bellflower St. John Bosco, which will play host to Bellflower.

St. Francis Coach Jim Bonds said he had “mixed emotions” about playing today, but said none of his players disagreed with the decision by school administrators. “We’re not going to think about the game all day and not think about the people,” St. Francis quarterback Ricky Knauf said. “Our attention is not going to be turned away from it. We all felt really sorry for them. But we had a good week of practice and we want to play.”

The Archdiocese of Orange County left the decision to play today up to its schools: Santa Ana Mater Dei, Anaheim Servite, Santa Margarita and Fullerton Rosary, an all-girls school. Mater Dei was supposed to host Mission Viejo tonight in football, but postponed the game until Saturday.

The decision of the Orange County Department of Education--15 superintendents of high schools and unified school districts--to not have schools play today was made unanimously at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Several Southern Section football games will take place tonight. The Los Angeles Unified School District canceled all athletic events at its 49 high schools.

*

Times staff writer Martin Henderson contributed to this report.