Absent Athletes Receive Stern Lesson in Dedication

There was no illegal batting practice or coaching misconduct, and there were no ineligible players, yet the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies took the unusual step of turning down an automatic berth its baseball team had earned to the City Section playoffs.

The reason: integrity and ethics. Its administration has both.

“Someone has to be the adult in this whole thing,” Principal Bob Weinberg said.

Commissioner Barbara Fiege said she believed Weinberg’s decision to decline the playoff invitation was unprecedented in City Section history.

Here’s what happened: Sherman Oaks CES, which has a nine-game regular season, was 7-0 and had already clinched the league title.

Then, five players decided to attend a senior picnic on May 13 instead of a game against LACES, forcing the team to forfeit because it had only eight players. Sherman Oaks forfeited another game on May 18 when the same seniors didn’t show because of work and other commitments.

The senior players apparently thought that because the team had clinched the league title and an automatic playoff berth, the last two games were meaningless.

“If it was an important game and the league title was on the line, I would have gone,” senior Andrew Serber said.

Three players were given permission to use their own cars to drive to the game from the senior picnic, but none chose that option, assistant principal Laura Hale said.

Weinberg and Hale, after consulting with the team’s coach, decided the Knights didn’t deserve their playoff berth because of a lack of commitment.

“Can you imagine the Dodgers, once they hit the magic number, not showing up?” Weinberg said. “Kids need to know they have to give 110%, whether it’s a team, business or family. If they let them down, there are consequences. You can’t go 80% and say, ‘OK, I’m going to coast now and not even bother to show up.’ ”

Some players say they disagree with Weinberg’s decision, and several don’t seem to understand the lesson he’s trying to teach.

“I understand the point,” junior outfielder Blake Blanchard said, “but in this case, I think it was unreasonable.”

On the contrary, Weinberg needed to take action to protect the integrity of the athletic program at Sherman Oaks CES and other magnet schools.

There are 11 non-comprehensive high schools in the City Section that field sports teams, and there are plans to add several more. Forfeiting causes people to question how seriously these schools should be taken as sports competitors.

“It’s a lesson in character,” Weinberg said. “It doesn’t do our cause any good when people do stuff like this.”

Sherman Oaks CES is one of the most prestigious magnet programs in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a waiting list of more than 3,000 for several hundred openings each year in grades four through 12. Its standardized test scores rank among the best in Los Angeles.

But what should people conclude about the Knights’ sports participants?

“I’m embarrassed we couldn’t get enough kids to field a team,” junior catcher Zack Arnstein said.

Weinberg, a former football coach and athlete, said it’s unconscionable to him that players would skip a game for a picnic.

“As a team captain, I would have driven to where they were and dragged them into the car,” he said.

Further, Sherman Oaks CES is part of the statewide Character Counts program that includes Pursuing Victory with Honor, which stresses that athletes must not only follow the rules but also commit to their team.

Administrators hope these were isolated incidents, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Blanchard said he sympathized with his senior teammates’ decision.

“I see it as a reasonable excuse,” he said. “It’s your last year in school. You want to participate in as many events as you can. I think the picnic would be more important to me.”

As it stands, the athletes at Sherman Oaks CES are going to have to decide whether they want to participate in an intramural program, where attendance is optional, or an interscholastic program, where signing up for a team means a real commitment.

Their credibility has been damaged, but thanks to the decision of the school administration, the principles of Pursuing Victory with Honor have been upheld.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.