1990s Present High School Sports With a Challenge : Athletics: Administrators, coaches try to determine where the decade will take them as the 21st Century looms.

Orange County high school athletics will undergo tremendous changes over the next few years, all based on a handful of decisions by school administrators.

Leagues are reorganizing, athletic budgets have been cut and superintendents are pushing toward a county section as early as the 1994-95 school year.

Decisions on those issues will shape athletic programs’ futures for the latter part of the decade and, perhaps, into the next century.

Along with any decision-making process comes disputes and discussions over what needs to be done--and what’s fair to all.

So far, there has been plenty of debate.

Much of the discussion has centered on the reorganization of the Sunset League, which will now include Mater Dei and five public schools, including Los Alamitos, Marina and Huntington Beach. League members are appealing the new format, and Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas has asked the section principals to rework the entire releaguing process.

But releaguing isn’t the only issue.

How about the county section? Is it affordable when so many county schools are cutting athletic budgets? Where will the money come from when schools are already facing budget cuts?

What about club sports and their effect on high school athletics? Will there be a day when athletes will have to pay for play?

Members of The Times’ Orange County high school sports staff posed those and other questions to a panel of administrators and coaches in a recent discussion.

The panel: Los Alamitos football Coach John Barnes, Marina Athletic Director Larry Doyle, Liberty Christian Principal Clark Stephens, Mater Dei Principal Lyle Porter and Beth Chilcott, cross country and track coach at Ocean View.

Participants were given a list of questions in advance, but the conversation did not follow any predetermined format.

RELEAGUING

Q. What changes, if any, would you like to see in the releaguing proposal that the Southern Section council will vote on next October? Does your school plan to appeal?

Chilcott: I know our principal was going to appeal. Ocean View has been pulled out of the Sunset League and put into the new league that has no name yet. The Sunset League was originally a Huntington Beach Union league until the addition of Santa Ana two years ago. A lot of the people living in Huntington Beach like the idea of a district league--I know Fountain Valley and Westminster are in there too--but it’s a geographic-area league.

Personally, I don’t particularly like the new league for my own sports (cross-country and track and field), but that’s because of individual reasons. I realize most of the releaguing considerations are based on football. It’s a good thing probably for our football team because our football team hasn’t had much success the past two years. They’re definitely looking to get away from the super-power league that they’re going to create. In terms of cross-country and track, I would prefer to stay where I am.

Doyle: I know the Sunset League is appealing along with Los Alamitos, and I don’t know if they contacted Mater Dei. Los Alamitos had worked closely with us on the proposals to make sure we see eye-to-eye because, they probably will be coming in with us on any proposal that came out.

When the new league came out with Los Al and Mater Dei and all the other changes, our league was against it, and Carol Hart, the principal at Los Alamitos, got involved with our appeal. She wrote a lot of the appeal itself. At our last league meeting, it was brought up that if we’re going to sign this (letter) as Sunset League, why do we include Los Alamitos while we should give Mater Dei the opportunity to also sign our part of the appeal. Our appeal was based on the process, saying that we needed to go back and look at how it was done that there were some questions about was it the fairest way to pick the leagues.

Porter: The Sunset League, I think it was the Huntington Beach principal, wrote me a letter asking me if I would like to join in the appeals process as objecting to the makeup of the Sunset League. I don’t object to that (league makeup) at all. It would be hard-pressed for anybody in this room to make a case that Mater Dei should not be involved in the Sunset League.

It seems to me that we should be in the either the Sunset or South Coast league, and geography becomes prohibitive in terms of us going down to the South Coast League. I can make academic arguments that are absolutely conclusive, even beginning with right now, we have makeup exams during third quarter exams. The weather in the spring interferes with makeup games. We have kids getting out of class to travel approximately 80% time more on the road than they need to, simply because we were placed in the South Coast.

I think the placement (in the Sunset League) was good. My objection to the releaguing isn’t to the process but the outcome of it. I feel Esperanza and Servite-Rosary were particularly misplaced (in the new league).

Q. Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas recently announced that the releaguing process would be reviewed. How would any of you like to change the process? What’s the fairest way to do it?

Doyle: Less time needs to be spent (on the process) but more energy. It’s an important thing. It needs to be done by people who are more qualified to make athletic decisions, which would mean more athletic directors and less principals.

I could see them (principals) having the final say in making the vote, but as far as coming up with proposals, I think the athletic directors would have been more qualified to do it. It’s not as political. They would have agendas just like principals would, protecting their own schools. But they (athletic directors) have more of an idea about the money (involved).

Some of the principals at some of the schools are very qualified. But some of the others, in talking to athletic directors, really don’t have an idea what’s going on with the releaguing process and what needs to be done.

Barnes: I feel the same way. I think a lot of administrators are making decisions for coaches and schools and they don’t know as much about it as they ought to. That’s some of the feedback I get from our principals.

Porter: I like the idea of the preliminary involvement of athletic directors. We certainly did that at our school, got both of them involved and asked them to tell us what they thought. I told them to meet their coaches and see what they think. I don’t know if that happened at every school. But I would like to see that formalized. At the same time, I think it’s hard to say if there’s more politics with athletic directors than principals. The decision should remain with the principals, to see the big picture.

Q. Why releague every two years? Florida and Texas place teams in districts and they stay there. Winning occurs in cycles. Why not allow schools to wait out the rough periods?

Barnes: We got thrown into a new league (Empire), and we had to struggle. Now we have built our team. It’s like our superintendent says, ‘It’s all your fault, John, that we’re going through all these (releaguing) problems.’ It’s true. Football is the only thing anybody cares about when it comes to releaguing. Do they care about girls’ track?

Chilcott: No.

Barnes: I look at the new league proposal for us and from the girls’ side of it, our girls are going to be in a lot tougher than the boys. But nobody cares. That has not even been brought up. The only thing is football, and maybe basketball.

I think it’s crazy to change leagues every two years. There’s too much time spent on it. Look at Fountain Valley, in 1988 they were CIF champs, and they went straight downhill, and now they’re coming back up. That happens to everybody. It’s also an excuse for some schools to say, ‘We can’t compete in this league, so let’s get out of here.’ I don’t like that excuse. When you’re in my shoes, you probably think, ‘Yeah, that’s easy for you to say,’ but I’ve been on both sides of the fence. Look back at the records, and you’ll see that.

I also feel that when you do well, you’re (labeled) “too good for everybody and you shouldn’t be in with us.” Look at our enrollment, it’s 1,850 . . . which isn’t a big school for Orange County. And if you look at our other boys’ sports, we don’t compete real well. I don’t like the fact that because you’ve done well, you’re punished. My personal feeling about being in the Sunset League is that if it’s going to be tougher, we’re going to have to work harder. Don’t complain about it, which is what a lot of schools do.

Porter: I was one of the principals on the releaguing committee, so I know personally, having been a cross-country and track coach in public and private school, that I took into consideration, and so did others on the committee, all the sports.

We recognized the dominance of football and boys’ basketball in so much of the releaguing process, but there was a great deal of discussion about the other sports and what would happen with the kind of releaguing format that was set up. The final vote on it was 30-25 (for it). I was one of the people on the committee who brought forth the proposal but voted against it.

Q. Will releaguing ever be like the national census? A 10-year occurrence (or five-year, whatever), regardless of shifts in population or how many new schools are built countywide?

Barnes: I would like to see the thing go to a four- or six-year cycle. It seems like this has been a constant battle now for six years, every two years. So it goes away for about six months, and then it’s right back up. They probably spend way too much time on this.

Q. For the sake of equity, will the day come when teams from one school are placed in more than one league on a sport-by-sport basis?

Chilcott: It’s not a bad idea, but I don’t know whether that would work. It would take a lot of effort. And to find someone who’s objective enough to be that familiar with every single sport and every single school, it would be a big job. In theory, it’s not a bad idea.

Stephens: I don’t think you would have to do every sport. If you took football and basketball and leagued them separately, everything else would fall into place. I’m not involved in the Orange County releaguing process, but in our (Small Schools) proposal, we are leaguing eight-man football separately than the other leagues. When you take football out of the formula, everything falls into place.

Porter: When Mater Dei and Servite left their parochial leagues, they did the same thing. They developed a league for football apart from the other sports. Barbara Wilson had that for an idea. When she was going around exploring the Orange County section, she indicated that some area where she had been an athletic director before had that configuration where they set the whole league up by sport.

Q. Is competitive balance more important than neighborhood rivalries? Esperanza and Los Alamitos receive a lot of publicity during football season. Are administrators concerned with keeping rivalries like Esperanza-El Dorado and Los Alamitos-Cypress alive?

Doyle: We’ve already made an agreement with Westminster, if the new releaguing does come in, that we will play them. Ocean View is our next choice as a preseason game. That has to be done on a local level, make it the school’s decision. If you go back to when we were in school, our league championship games weren’t the games, it was Magnolia-Savanna, those were the big games. The Anaheim-Western games in football and basketball. It’s up to the coaching staffs to maintain those if they’re taken away by league rivalries. Another factor is money. You’ll get more students to come to those games.

COUNTY SECTION

Q. How do you envision a county section? How should the divisions and leagues be broken up? Is the consideration of the current releaguing process with an eye to the future of a county section?

Doyle: One of the problems you’re going to have with a county section is that you’ll have a limited number of leagues and divisions. It makes the playoff structure even more difficult (and harder) to come up with some type of innovative scheduling to get different leagues for basketball and other sports.

If you could go to a college system of leagues where your opening game is a league game some years, but also have byes built in that allow for cross-league scheduling. You would have to have someone with a really good computer program, but it’s available. If we had a six-year league cycle of leagues and a master league schedule, we could call an Esperanza and say, “Would you like to have a home-and-home contest for Sept. 4, 1996, and Sept. 5 1997?” You could do that with enough leagues.

Barnes: The other thing about is that everybody schedules their own games. Larry and I know because we’ve scheduled each others’ teams, and we’ve had a good working relationship. But it’s not that way with most. It’s very difficult to find games. In football, it’s a simple equation. If you’re good, you have to play good teams. If you’re really good, no one wants to play you, because no one wants to lose in football.

This past year, I called Sunny Hills, Trabuco Hills and Orange, which all needed fourth games, and they all said no, they wouldn’t play us. Those are competitive games for us. We ended up with Long Beach Jordan, Long Beach Millikan, Palmdale, Blair and Marina on our nonleague schedule because we can’t get any other county teams. That bothers me.

So if we go to an Orange County section, you almost need someone who can say, “You have to play some people, here’s your pool of teams to choose from.”

Doyle: It’s not always just Los Alamitos (having trouble finding games). Edison went through it, Marina went through it. In our down years and Edison’s down years, teams wouldn’t play them because they were from the Sunset League (a traditionally strong football league). We went through some horrible years, but we still couldn’t get people to play us in preseason.

Q. Why do we need a county section? Or do we?

Barnes: They wanted the Orange County section because some of the administrators were fighting with the Southern Section. But I don’t think it has been thought out very much.

Porter: It comes down to governance. There’s a preference to have the control of the superintendents’ level in the public schools. And the Southern Section is clearly a principals’ organization. In reality--and I might as well be the one to say it--the motivating influence was whether the private and parochial schools would be leagued with the public schools.

Stephens: This is the second round (of discussion) in the past three years about a county section. One of my complaints in the first round was that it hadn’t been thought out. There hadn’t been any planning done. In my views, it’s a top-down command issue, and the people in the trenches--the athletic directors, the coaches and even the principals--aren’t saying anything, I think, because they feel their jobs are threatened. There are going to be some struggles for some schools.

Barnes: From a coaching standpoint, I don’t think there should be a county section. A year ago, the county had football champions in six divisions. That’s great, especially when we’re playing teams from Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County, the whole works.

If we cut that out and get down to two county section champions, everyone will say, “Hell, that doesn’t mean anything there. They just take care of themselves.” That’s the way we think of the LA City section right now. I always thought, “Carson and Banning, so what? There are two good schools in that section, and you don’t know anybody else.” We could easily get to that here, and it would really hurt the image of Orange County sports. The image right now is top dog, great programs who can compete with anybody.

Besides, we have to find tons of funding, corporate sponsors to make it go, and charge schools more the first few years.

Q. Could we afford it? High school athletic programs have suffered from across-the-board school budget cuts over the past five years, and the Southern Section just lost its major sponsor, Reebok. So where would the money come from for a county section?

Doyle: The best thing to do, and it has been proposed all across the country, is to get something from the pro sports teams. How many guys played for the Rams and Angels who didn’t play football or baseball in high school? They owe it to us. How many people who go to pro games are high school kids? I think that’s where the money needs to come from. That’s the logical thing.

How do you go to (Irvine developer) Donald Cole and say, “Give money to high school athletics” when the Rams and the Angels aren’t out on the forefront doing it? Look at the positive public relations those teams could make from this.

We have a hockey team now, and local kids are playing hockey. The football and baseball teams are logical choices. We have two teams right here in Anaheim Stadium, and they charge $6 to park. I grew up in Anaheim and was there when they broke ground on the stadium. I’m embarrassed to pay $6 to park my car there. Where’s all that money going? Why can’t we get any of it? If they’re going to raise the price of parking a buck, why don’t they give that money back to the schools for athletics? Think of the money that’s there that could help us. Tie that into the county section, and then it might be a good idea to go that direction.

I do know those considering the county section were talking about tying in with Anaheim Stadium and the Anaheim Arena for playoffs and also office space for their headquarters. Somebody has to tap those people to help us financially. Whether there’s a county section or not, they should come in and donate some money to the county schools.

Q. Hmm, would that mean we would have the Mighty Duck Orange County Championships?

Doyle: There you go.

Q. Professional sports teams in Chicago raised money for struggling high school programs. Has anyone thought to approach the Rams or Angels with a similar proposal?

Doyle: Someone like John Barnes can’t go to the Rams and do it. It has to be someone with clout, with structure. It has to be a group that has to formulate a plan.

Stephens: Remember, there are two issues here. One is professional athletics helping us fund high school sports. The other is justification of the extra expense of a county section, which will do nothing more than try to duplicate what the Southern Section is already doing.

Doyle: From a greed standpoint, I don’t think we want pro sports to help the Southern Section because you’re going to throw in the Dodgers, Raiders, Lakers, Clippers and another 420 high schools in. It would be great if we could have just our local pro teams support Orange County sports by giving X-amount of dollars or a flat-fee donation to each school.

Take the money from one of those Angel doubleheaders--or what used to be doubleheaders and are now two games--and divide it among the county schools. When they play Seattle, call it “Orange County Athletics Night.” Or try it for a three-game series. Or maybe a Rams’ preseason game.

Q. If a section does come to pass, how would you see it divided? Two divisions? Three?

Barnes: It would have to be two divisions. You can’t water it down. That’s about 30 teams per division, and that’s about what you get in the Southern Section right now. If you went to three divisions, you would have the same couple teams playing each other.

Porter: That’s just with the 60 schools; there are 15 small schools too, so we actually have 75 schools altogether in the county. Because there was really no provision in the new section or a way to make a provision, the 15 smaller schools had to fend for themselves, and they probably would in a county section too. Clark probably has some thoughts about if they would be treated fairly by both the Southern Section and county section.

Stephens: It’s no big secret. You have 15 schools ranging from 50 in enrollment to 500 to 600. There’s no way you can put together leagues. It would be tough to be equitable with leagues, and there would be no playoffs. There’s no way you can take 15 schools with that kind of (enrollment) range and have any kind of equity in the playoffs. Those 15 schools would give up a lot to come to a county section.

Q. Under a two-division format, those 15 schools would be in with smaller private schools as large as 1,200 students, right?

Stephens: Obviously. Has anyone ever done a sample bracket of what a playoff would look like? We’ve gone a long distance in this thinking about a county section, but has everybody taken a look at what a football playoff would have been like in a county section last fall? Or a basketball playoff? With some schools, it would dawn on them: “Wait a minute, this is going to be a disaster with who we would be required to play.”

Doyle: Like Lyle said, the smaller schools weren’t considered. When you count the 60 schools who voted on the proposal, the small schools aren’t included in that. They would almost have to be a division of their own, and have their own playoff structure.

And that’s where you go for independent, at-large teams and certain programs. I think what Laguna Beach tried to do (pull out of Pacific Coast League and play a free-lance football schedule) was very innovative. They should have been listened to a little more. A school like that should go at-large. They still have to go out and get some wins to qualify for the playoffs.

PUBLIC VS. PAROCHIAL: CAN THEY CO-EXIST?

Q. We’re nearing the end of the first year of parochial schools participating in public-school leagues. How has it worked out so far?

Doyle: We were pretty happy with Servite and Rosary in the Sunset League. The only problems that have come up were miscommunications about things in the league constitution. Servite spoke at the releaguing meeting about wanting to stay in the league. They had been in a year, got to know everyone and got everything ironed out. They wanted to stay, and we were willing to keep them in.

Our league schools don’t lose kids to Servite. That was the biggest complaint why we don’t want Mater Dei as a Sunset League school, because we have numerous kids who play for Mater Dei. Kids from Marina, Ocean View and Fountain Valley go there. That’s something that the coaches are really against--having to play and get beaten by kids that you brought up. The feeling of the coaches was a lot better that it was Servite and not Mater Dei.

Q. What has been the reaction in the South Coast to Mater Dei joining this year?

Porter: It has been a very positive reaction, and we went over that at our last league meeting. Our only objection to being in the league is the travel. It’s punitive, and it compromises our academic standards.

. . . When we get into any questions of competitive equity, I respect the feelings that you don’t want someone who is a next door neighbor transferring over from the Los Alamitos or Marina area to Mater Dei, and we have these larger (enrollment) boundaries. My response to that is that Mater Dei played by the rules, and it’s my responsibility to make sure those rules are followed.

Q. There never seems to be any concern for the smaller private schools, who are in the same situation as a Mater Dei as far as limitless enrollment boundaries. Liberty Christian is in Huntington Beach and has picked up athletes from the area. Have you ever received complaints?

Stephens: No complaints. . . . As schools, we need to understand that the kids don’t belong to us. Kids belong to their parents. And it’s the parents’ responsibility to put them in a place where they can get the best education for that child. The child starts out in my school and the parent feels the other school is better for them, then more power to them. But I shouldn’t get so centered such that I feel it’s “my kid” and I’m jealous of losing “my kid” to your system.

Barnes: I went through 12 years of Catholic education and it was great; I would do it again. I have a little bit of both perspectives, a public-school coach, and I started coaching in a Catholic school. I see it two ways. No. 1 is, there was no doubt in my parents’ minds that I was going to Long Beach St. Anthony. I was going to bypass five Long Beach public schools, an hour on the bus each way. But Long Beach Jordan, which was my attendance area, never lost me because I had no intention of ever going there.

MONEY

Q. From all indications, state budget cuts in education will only get worse. The Orange district took a big cut last fall and could face another one. What can be done to help save athletic programs financially?

Chilcott: It’s sad that we’ve turned into not only coaches and psychologists for our players, but fund-raisers too. Frankly, this job doesn’t pay a whole lot. But it becomes a lot of extra time with fund-raising. In our district, we’ve gone to bingo, and it has been successful for Marina. We went out to local merchants for advertising banners. Baseball has placards on the fence. That’s what it’s coming to.

Barnes: Being a good ol’ Catholic school boy, I know where the money comes from. You put your hand out, and the parents just keep giving it to you. If it’s important enough to the parents, they’ll sell their home to kept that kid going to school or in shoes or in a football uniform. We’re all getting to that point. For so many years, everybody just took it for granted that everything would be paid for. A lot of districts have even charged kids to play. Next year, we’re going to that for the first time. It will be a transportation (bus) cost.

Q. Will there be scholarships available for kids who can’t afford the fee?

Barnes: Of course. Always, always. There’s a pool of money within the district.

Q. What about schools where parental support isn’t strong? How can they raise money?

Doyle: They’re in trouble. That’s sad, but it’s the truth.

Barnes: The haves will have more, and the have-nots will have less.

Doyle: We have kids at our school who can’t pay the transportation fee and will come in and say it. We have trust funds, booster club people and memorial funds who help.

Porter: It should be celebrated that those schools are providing opportunities through athletics, drama and other activities. Students do better, high GPAs, when they’re more involved in extra-curricular activities.

I see us as a society going through a real me-first phase, and we have to accept the responsibility. Call it the baby-boomers or what, but we have not got behind the education and the values of our kids the way it was done 20 to 25 years ago. We haven’t done it with tax dollars. We haven’t done it with management of those tax dollars. And we certainly haven’t done it as parents.

Q. Is cutting coaching stipends in lower-level programs the only answer to trimming a budget? It seems to be what some districts are doing.

Doyle: Not at all. We can’t cut stipends because the boosters get more involved, and you can’t pay guys or get trained staff educators to coach anymore. We’re losing them. It’s hard to get them to come out with the headaches and the low pay. If we cut, who’s going to want to coach? I can’t blame them for not wanting to come out for our stipend, and our district pays pretty well. If you cut the lower-level programs, you go to outside agencies (clubs) to train your kids and they have more power.

Barnes: Cutting stipends is a minor thing. What happened in the Orange district is a real pet peeve of mine. They cut from $2,000 to $1,000 for 25 people. Twenty-five thousand dollars . . . that’s just saving papers at some big schools. It’s nothing. They don’t realize what they’re doing to the total school program. Coaches make a big difference.

CLUB PROGRAMS: PAY FOR PLAY

Q. What impact has club sports had on high-school athletics? Is there a conflict? Are students being discouraged from playing several sports in favor of specializing year-round with a club?

Doyle: I don’t know what it’s like at other schools, but we’ve had a lot of problems with kids spending a lot of time in their club programs, which is taking away from time they could be using to play other sports. There are some great club programs and some great club coaches out there, don’t get me wrong. But a lot of club coaches aren’t in it for coaching kids, they’re in it for other reasons, whether it’s to be successful or pad your ego. I’ve seen a lot of deceitful club coaches telling kids they have to be there (at practice) or they get punished and not let them play.

Barnes: The clubs are in it for one reason--money. My daughter has been in club volleyball, so I’ve seen that it’s an incredible money-maker. I wish I had the brains to quit (high school) coaching and go coach club or private quarterback lessons like (Former El Toro Coach) Bob Johnson is doing. At $40 an hour, I could be working all day Sunday. I’m not kidding you. It’s true.

Most of the guys who run clubs have nothing to do with high schools. They’re smart businessmen who are pretty good coaches too.

Q. Do the clubs help the kids land college scholarships?

Porter: Definitely. But I see a major disadvantage to the clubs in the long run for high school sports. Philosophically, I would love to see kids play multiple sports. I’m not in favor of year-round programs. The club sports interfere with academics and with the reasons high school exists. They don’t just exist for academic reasons, they’re for social reasons, co-curricular reasons.

I see tennis as a model for what is going to happen with club sports. You get an outstanding tennis player at a school and he may or may not play for the school, and they have their own private coach and they’re going all over the United States to play and they stop participating at the high school level. I’m afraid clubs will go in the same direction. Club coaches will put prohibitions on their kids that keep them from participating at the high school level.

Barnes: And it’s a real select group. To be on a club team, you’re the one or two best players at your school. We’re cutting kids out of participating with clubs. Sure, they do a nice job of coaching. But they’re convincing kids that you’ll get college scholarships through playing club, not school. In volleyball, maybe it is true. A college coach can go to a weekend club tournament and see 50 teams. He could never scout 50 high school games. There’s just not enough time.

Q. When is too much enough for a kid in club sports? What about burnout?

Porter: I was talking to a freshman volleyball player the other day who plays high school in the fall and is now with a club. She practices from 6:30 to 9:30 every night. She gets out of school around 2:30 p.m., hopefully she eats and does some homework, and then she goes to club volleyball. That’s her year. Where’s the opportunity for any of that branching out of her personality?

Barnes: I pulled my daughter out of club volleyball about a month ago. She started playing softball, and she’s a great student. She has a life. She has to have time for a life.

The Southern Section has lost control with the club teams. It used to be you couldn’t be around a coach on Sunday, you couldn’t be in another sport during your high school season. Now, club softball and volleyball practices year-round. Every time something comes up with a club team that the section has to rule on, what’s the decision? They give more leeway to the club teams.

John Barnes

More than 25 Los Alamitos football players have landed Division I college scholarships since Barnes became the school’s head coach in 1979. His teams have won five Empire League titles and were Southern Section Division III champions in 1991 and Division II finalists in 1992. He currently teaches physical education at the school.

Barnes graduated from Long Beach St. Anthony High in 1966 and received a bachelor’s degree in physical education and sociology from Nevada in 1970. Besides Los Alamitos, Barnes has taught at St. Anthony, Corvallis Intermediate school in Norwalk, Cypress High and Magnolia High. He lives in Placentia with Anita, his wife of 22 years, daughter Karyn, a softball and volleyball player at El Dorado, and sons Brian, 13, and Jimmy, 6.

Beth Chilcott

Chilcott has taught adult education at Rancho Santiago College for 12 years and coached Ocean View girls’ and boys’ cross-country and track and field for the last 13 years.

She graduated from Anaheim High in 1965, attended Cal State Fullerton for three years before earning a teaching credential and an art degree from Cal State Long Beach in 1970. She has been a substitute teacher in the Garden Grove and Huntington Beach school districts for 22 years. Chilcott lives in Huntington Beach with her husband, Jeff, an Ocean View teacher, and daughter Amy, a sophomore at UC Irvine and son Clay, a sophomore at Huntington Beach High. Chilcott has competed in 15 marathons.

Larry Doyle

Doyle is in his sixth year as athletic director at Marina High, where he also teaches math and is an assistant football coach. A 1967 graduate of Magnolia High, Doyle earned a degree in physical education with minors in math and biology from the University of Redlands in 1971.

Before Marina, Doyle taught nine years and coached football 11 years at Newport Harbor High, where he also was an assistant basketball and baseball coach. He lives in Fountain Valley with his wife, Candi, and daughters Landry, 14, and Kari, 10.

Lyle Porter

Porter is in his third year as Mater Dei High principal and is a member of the Southern Section’s releaguing committee. Before Mater Dei, Porter was principal for seven years at Mission Prep in the San Luis Obispo area and was president of the Tri-County League, which has public and private schools.

He was director of guidance and cross-country coach for four years at Morro Bay High and taught and coached cross-country and track at Riverside Notre Dame High. He is a 1963 graduate of Phoenix Brophy Prep, where he played football and ran track. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in educational counseling from Loyola Marymount. He lives in Huntington Beach with his wife, Meg, and sons Jason, 21, Damien, 19, Conor, 10, and Kellen, 7.

Clark Stephens

Stephens has been Liberty Christian’s principal for 12 years and is the Small Schools representative to the CIF Southern Section releaguing committee. He was a missionary in West Germany and Japan and has been a sixth-grade teacher at Liberty Christian.

He graduated from Oxnard Hueneme High in 1967 and earned a degree in forest management from Humboldt State in December 1971. He also has a master’s degree in Christian school administration from Biola University.

Stephens lives in Huntington Beach with his wife, Kathy, and children Jonathan, Kaleb, and Bethany.