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Public vs. private battle heating up again
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CIF-SS agenda items could end the calm period in the debate.
It has been awhile since we heard much on the private school athletics vs. public school athletics issue, except for some interesting parents on Internet message boards.
The calm before the storm, as they say …
The CIF-Southern Section Council meeting next week will provide some fuel. That meeting, Oct 23 at the Rose Center in Westminster, will include non-action items regarding private school athletics on the agenda. Non-action items are proposals that are in the discussion phase but later could become action items, which are proposals upon which the CIF-SS Council will vote.
These potential proposals resulted from a meeting at which private and public school representatives voiced their concerns and differences. They include:
•Private schools cannot provide financial aid to students because of the students' athletic prowess.
•Coaches' pay for all schools must be filed upon request at the CIF-SS office and be available for public examination.
The above is all that is left from last year's Century League proposal that would have placed public schools and private schools in separate playoff divisions. That proposal never reached a vote because of poor timing and inadequate research. While the fact the Century League's top teams historically have benefitted from transfers or out-of-attendance-area student-athletes was not part of the proposal's demise, it at least made the Century League proposal hypocritical.
Some reactions here:
•While it is appropriate to make sure student-athletes are not being lured to private schools by free tuition, it might be difficult to prove that an excellent athlete's receipt of financial aid was based solely upon athletic excellence. Public-school student athletes get financial aid, too, a reported national average of $9,866 per year per student, from taxpayers.
•If it is requested that the salaries of coaches be made public, private schools, which are private businesses, might challenge that in court.
That calm period perhaps just came to a close.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
•A crucial issue of the eligibility case of Corona del Mar water polo player Martin Babovic, a foreign-exchange student from Serbia, is that the CIF-SS had ruled pre-enrollment contact took place between the local host family and Babovic through telephone conversations and e-mails before Babovic entered the foreign-exchange program. Such contact could be construed as undue influence, a CIF-SS violation, which is, as the CIF-SS Constitution and By-Laws states, "any act, gesture or communication … which is performed personally, or through another, which may be objectively seen as an inducement, or part of a process of inducing a student … by or on behalf of a member school, to enroll in, transfer to or remain in, a particular school for athletic purposes."
•Servite sold all of its allotment of tickets for the Oct. 17 Mater Dei-Servite football game. Mater Dei puts its allotment – around 5,000 – on sale Monday. Servite-Mater Dei will be at Cal State Fullerton.
•More on Mater Dei-Servite: It will not be moved back to Angel Stadium, which was the original site for the game until the Angels clinched an MLB playoff berth. Even with the Angels eliminated from the playoffs, the game will stay at Cal State Fullerton. There is no live TV of the game.
•Los Alamitos is celebrating its 40th anniversary and is having a Hall of Fame Banquet as part of that next Wednesday at the Grand in Long Beach. The long list of honorees includes J.T. Snow, Robb Nen and Cathy Rigby. Tickets can be bought by contacting Karolyn Nelson at (562) 598-5677, but the deadline for purchase is Friday.
•For the record, how I voted on the county football top 10: 1. Servite; 2. Mission Viejo; 3. Edison; 4. Orange Lutheran; 5. Mater Dei; 6. Los Alamitos; 7. Tesoro; 8. Esperanza; 9. Newport Harbor; 10. La Habra.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
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