Cathedral Catholic, St. Augustine, and Mission Bay, three of La Jolla's league opponents, were ranked 2-3-10 in the recent CIF basketball poll, providing more fuel for the argument for alignment based on power rankings.
The Vikings' football team will play in a realigned league next year, grouping them with teams more homogeneous as far as recent performance.
Basketball teams haven't been realigned, as football and other sports in CIF have been or will be. Cathedral and the Saints, of course, represent private schools who can offer any student the inducement of a tuition-paid education. La Jolla doesn't have that luxury--what it offers is free to all.
The Dons just added 7-footer Brandon McCoy this season to an already talented team. The San Diego Section permits student-athletes to transfer freely among schools, with only a requirement to sit out part of the start of the season to compensate for the transfer. For example, Trisha Turner transferred to La Jolla last year from Serra, and had to sit out several games at the beginning of the field hockey and soccer seasons.
Having visited the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, this fall, it makes one reflect on how far we have come in "amateur" sports from putting up peach baskets that the ball had to be retrieved from after each field goal with a ladder, to young athletes being trained by paid personal trainers, in addition to their regular coaches; travel teams with coaches who aren't classroom teachers but who solely coach a sport; Hudl highlight videos that teenagers pay for to send to college recruiters; and enrollment in a high school merely for the sport the student will play. It makes one sit back and think.
Naismith, a Canadian trained in seminary to be a pastor, was looking for an activity for his young students that would combine benefits for body, mind, and spirit.
I can remember my brother and me playing against Jamaal Wilkes, who would go on to play for the Lakers, in his last regular-season high school game before a packed house at Santa Barbara High, with many college recruiters in attendance. Santa Barbara built an enormous lead against our poor team from Camarillo, and Wilkes left the game to a thunderous standing ovation.
The Dons were also stacked with 6'8" Don Ford, who, like Wilkes, would go on to play for the Lakers.
Santa Barbara induced Wilkes' family to move from Ventura, where he was an All-CIF Southern Section player for two years, to Santa Barbara by having ministers in the area help find a church where Jamaal's father, pastor Leander Wilkes, could serve.
So, I'm reminded that "non-recruiting" of high school athletes has been going on for a long time.
Copyright 2015 Ed Piper
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