Football drama doesn't stop in Trinity

Trinity League football sure is dramatic. Even in the offseason.

During the 2011 Trinity League football season, Servite beat Mater Dei for the third year in a row and went 5-0 in league, but the defending CIF-Southern Section Pac-5 Division champion Friars lost in the second round of the Pac-5 playoffs.

Mater Dei missed the playoffs for the first time since 1986, but defeated Santa Margarita, which went on to win CIF-Southern Section and CIF state championships.

JSerra beat Orange Lutheran for the first time, and Lutheran, an Orange County top 10 team all season, missed the playoffs for the second year in a row.

We saw Santa Margarita continue its resurgence under second-year coach Harry Welch, as the Eagles won section and state championships. They provided perhaps the season's most exciting moment when quarterback Johnny Stanton scored on a leaping 1-yard run on fourth down with 16 seconds remaining in a 42-37 victory over Bellarmine Prep of San Jose in the CIF State Division 1 game.

The postseason has been hectic, too.

One coaching change has occurred, with the announcement Tuesday that Jim Kunau is out as football coach at Orange Lutheran. Kunau said he did not resign from the position he held for 19 years during which his teams won 13 league titles, two CIF-Southern Section championships and a CIF State championship, but is willing to accept the decision.

And Santa Margarita coach Harry Welch might be in some Jacuzzi-temperature water.

First, it was revealed, less than two weeks after the Eagles' state championship victory, that two Santa Margarita assistant coaches, Sean Coen and Robert Hendricks, were allowed to remain on the Eagles coaching staff after the school learned that Coen and Hendricks had been convicted Sept. 15 in Orange County Superior Court of misdemeanor marijuana possession. The misdemeanors resulted from plea bargaining after Coen and Hendricks were confronted with felony charges after the Orange County District Attorney's office determined that Coen and Hendricks were involved in a sophisticated marijuana growing and distribution operation in a San Juan Capistrano garage.

Santa Margarita maintains that there was a period of time during the 2011 season in which Coen and Hendricks' legal troubles were hidden from Welch and from school administration, but upon later discovering at separate times the convictions of first Coen and then Hendricks, the two were allowed to resume coaching in the Santa Margarita football program.

In late December, Santa Margarita sent two emails to school parents. The first one, sent Dec. 23, stated that the Diocese of Orange — Santa Margarita is a Diocesan school — was satisfied that Coen and Hendricks were fit to return to football coaching duties at Santa Margarita and that is why the two were on the Eagles coaching staff through the playoffs. That went along with what Welch had said earlier, that Coen and Hendricks were "in good standing with the school, with me and with the Diocese."

A followup letter sent Dec. 29 said, basically, upon further review, we're getting rid of these two guys.

Now, less than a month later, we've learned this week that a Santa Margarita football coach was under investigation by the Orange County Sheriff Department for a possible assault upon a Santa Margarita player, and the sheriff department has concluded that investigation and turned the case over to the Orange County District Attorney office. And we learned that Welch has been placed on administrative leave by the diocese pending results of an investigation into an incident involving at least one member of Santa Margarita school personnel. Maybe those two events are not connected, and maybe the sheriff department will decide that no assault or any other criminal infraction occurred.

There will be many big-name Southern California coaches who will apply for the Orange Lutheran job. Will they be making photocopies of their resumes, in anticipation of sending one along to a Trinity League school a few miles south? We shall see.

And what about Troy Thomas? Every January, we hear that the wildly successful Servite football coach is leaving — this time, the supposed destination is BYU, where Thomas would be an assistant coach. Thomas informed us that he has not been contacted by BYU representatives; alas, Thomas confirmed that he is not under contract at Servite to coach there for the 2012 season, which reminds one of the tumult that surrounded the protracted Servite-Thomas contract negotiations during the winter of 2010.

Other than that, things are stable in the Trinity League. Jim Hartigan keeps adding brick and mortar to the foundation of JSerra football, Jason Negro is aiming for even further improvement at St. John Bosco of Bellflower, and Bruce Rollinson keeps rockin' 'em Red at Mater Dei.

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:

•The county football all-star game — officially, the Brea Lions Orange County North-South Prep All-Star Football Game — will be July 6 at Orange Coast College. That is a week earlier than usual for the game, which will be played for the 52nd time. Orange Coast College's parking lot is increasingly being used for Orange County Fair needs, so the game has moved to a week before the opening week of the fair.

•If memory serves, the county's larger private schools first thought of having letter-of-intent signing day ceremonies. More public schools are doing that; Huntington Beach, for example, just announced it is having one on Feb. 1, the first day of the signing period for football, men's water polo, soccer, cross country and track and field. These ceremonies, open to the media (ocvarsity.com covers as many of these signing-day events as staffing and timing allow), are great opportunities for all schools, private and public, to show off the great accomplishments of their college-bound student-athletes and it's a wonder why more schools don't take advantage.

•The two-day Nike Extravaganza showcase is Feb. 3-4 at Mater Dei. Tickets ($12-$22) are on sale at Mater Dei's ticket window, which accepts cash only, Monday-Friday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Matchups include the top two ranked girls teams in California, No. 1 Windward of Los Angeles vs. No. 2 Mater Dei on Feb. 3 at 9 p.m., preceded by the Mater Dei boys against St. John Bosco at 7:30 p.m.; and, on the all-boys Feb. 4 schedule, Mater Dei vs. La Verne Lutheran (ranked No. 1 in the deep Division 4AA) at 7:30 p.m. and Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas, led by the nation's top-rated prospect, Shabazz Muhammad, vs. Whitney Young of Chicago at 9 p.m.

•People who allege that Mater Dei's boys basketball team gets favoritism from the officials won't like these statistics: last week, when Mater De defeated JSerra, 80-45, at JSerra, Mater Dei took 19 free throws, and made 17, and JSerra took seven (and made four). But the number of personal fouls was not so different — 15 for JSerra, 12 for Mater Dei — so maybe the players who go aggressively to the basket with frequency, as Mater Dei guys do, will get the calls.

Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com