Officials Say Program Will Be Monitored Closely

A month after Inglewood High’s football program was placed on probation by the Southern Section, several questions remain:

* Who was responsible for allowing three academically ineligible transfers, including a fifth-year senior, to play football for Inglewood last season?

* What specific measures is Inglewood taking to prevent future rules violations?

* What guidelines, set by the Southern Section, must Inglewood follow to avoid being declared ineligible for the 1992 playoffs?

Hollis Dillon, director of special services for the Inglewood Unified School District, said the district is taking the necessary steps to safeguard all athletic programs from eligibility problems.

“There will be a strict monitoring process done during the season,” Dillon said. “Our own monitoring process will be more extensive than that required by (the Southern Section).

“We have no doubts that the whole staff at Inglewood will comply with the guidelines and make sure that something like this never happens again.”

The reasons for it happening in the first place are open to debate. Some believe a lack of communication between the administrative and football staffs resulted in the violations. Others contend it was a paperwork snafu.

In any event, three academically ineligible athletes--two from Leuzinger (Antrero Fuller and Willie Sargent) and one from Hawthorne (Lester Church) were allowed to play football for Inglewood in 1991. Circumstances involving Fuller and Church made the violations even more embarrassing for Inglewood.

Fuller was a fifth-year senior who had been expelled from Leuzinger near the end of his fourth year in high school. Church gained eligibility with an unofficial transcript that was found to have been forged--it was actually the transcript of his twin sister, Leslie, a Hawthorne student. Lester Church’s photograph was superimposed over the his sister’s and one of her credits--pep squad--had been deleted.

It has never been discovered who doctored the transcript. Inglewood hired a private investigator to look into the matter, but it remains a mystery.

“We’ve looked into more theories than you could ever believe,” Dillon said. “It was the craziest thing.”

The bottom line is that Inglewood allowed Fuller, Church and Sargent to play football without first obtaining their official transcripts from their former schools.

“It was a mistake,” Dillon conceded.

Inglewood football Coach Angelo Jackson said the negative publicity that resulted from the violations has caused football players to leave the school. However, Jackson said he does not blame anybody in the administration.

“All we can do is coach, we don’t have access to transcripts,” he said. “I don’t think anybody intentionally did anything wrong.”

Jackson is expected to return as coach in 1992, but two others involved with the football program last season will not be back. Rico Perez, an equipment manager who has been accused of recruiting players from Leuzinger, is no longer affiliated with the Inglewood football team, and Rick Amadio, Inglewood’s athletic director the past two years, was relieved of those duties last week. He will remain at the school as a physical education teacher.

Asked if he considered himself a scapegoat for Inglewood’s troubles, Amadio said, “I think so. When something goes wrong, people are going to look to blame somebody. Obviously, if you’re in charge of athletics, you’re probably going to be the one held accountable for what happened.

“I will admit some guilt and liability, but I knowingly did nothing wrong.”

Amadio said part of the problem was that Inglewood had no procedures in place to guard against this type of situation.

“I counted on the coaches to tell me who was on their roster,” he said. “A lot of that was not done. There was not a lot of communication between me and the coaches. That’s really where a lot of the problems stemmed from.

“I was not aware of any of (the ineligible) players playing on the team.”

Amadio does not believe any coaches were aware that Fuller, Sargent and Church were ineligible.

“Nothing was done to gain an advantage or outwardly cheat,” he said.