EAGLE ROCK H.S. COACH ASSAULTED
The ERHS woes continue for their football program- The LA Times reports this morning that Coach Lopez was assaulted during practice on Thursday by a former football player for Eagle Rock High, as another part of the Principal Velasco-Coach Chou controversy continues. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-football8-2008nov08,0,4479688.column

The Friday game at Belmont was cancelled as Principal Velasco considered it too dangerous since half of the team had been sitting out the practices in the stands and not in a condition to play safely. The assault, he said, was not the reason for the forfeit of the season's last home game for Belmont.

The Daily News also covered the story, and has a few more details. http://www.dailynews.com/sports/ci_10927122

Opinion: Regardless of the loyalty that the students and players feel to Coach Chou and the unhappiness over the situation, there is an extreme lack of maturity shown, a lot of it on the players’ side. If they wanted to protest the decision, they should have continued the protest through their parents and administrative processes, as slow and frustrating as they are.


The idea of being a proponent of sabotage of the team for the entire 2008 season is viewed by many as a high school equivalent of a temper tantrum and pouting child who disagrees with his parents' decisions. The actions on Thursday elevated this to a more serious level.


The whole school suffered this season, and this is one of the best applications for the term, "Cutting off your nose to spite your face." The particular student, according to the story, was urged to hit the coach and he followed their instructions, spearing the coach with a helmet, as the coach was not looking. He ran away afterwards and jumped a fence, which might give you an idea of what he thought his actions represented.


For the student body to accept this level of conduct would be poor policy. The fact that the players were part of the problem, urging the act, shows them to be lacking in the moral character that Coach Chou was credited with instilling in his players. It looks like all the good that Coach Chou was said to have produced in terms of conduct and character did not spill over into all the players, with many on their roster being new players.


While the students may not be happy with the outcome for coaching, they really had an obligation to the school and to the rest of the community to play out their games in the best way that they could. Clearly, this has not been the case. If this team were a private company, you would not see many on that team keeping their jobs.


Part of the high school experience is to prepare the students ready for being full-fledged adults, taking responsibility for their own actions. You are supposed to act accordingly as you move up in grade level, not return to less mature approaches to problems.


The identity of the student who did this crime is known to the players, and probably to the administration, too, since he came into the office to complain about the coach and was told to leave. The routine security procedures would already have made identification here complete, even though the attack was not prevented. If the school did not manage to screen him at all, then the players have a moral obligation to cooperate and give up his name- it will come out sooner or later, anyway. Their are pranks and there are crimes. This was no prank.


It very well could have had more serious consequences. School security, from my observations, is either not taken seriously or applied overly intense for some matters, but weakly or inconsistently in other matters, all in the same school. Entry onto a campus could also endanger other students, which absolutely is intolerable. The attack on the coach was equally serious, with a blatant disregard for authority. Isn’t that the kind of thing that’s been shown in too many high schools where firearms and death have happened? We don’t want to see this again, and we are fortunate if the coach recovers completely. Unexpected bodily impacts can have permanent and disastrous results.


What should happen to the offender? If he is still under age 18, juvenile law will apply, but if he is 18 or over, he is subject to application of the laws as any adult is, and it looks like he should be arrested and charged with the crime and let the criminal process handle the rest. Needless to say, this did not demonstrate any good judgment, but then most criminal conduct provides you with a lot of examples of what reasonable people DON'T do.


Overall, the situation at Eagle Rock High is a shameful situation, with the principal having a history of decisions that certainly have not been crowd-pleasers. It looks like Velasco doesn't care about anything but his own ego, but that's beside the point as far as how the members of the football team (the dissident football players) have handled matters. Even if they think their principal makes lousy decisions does not justify poor performance, and in no way justifies attacking the guy they put in to keep thing running.


If these unhappy players were not going to give it their best effort, they should have quit the team and let students who will try to play give it a shot. Maybe they would have lost every game badly, but they would have had the pride in knowing that they still were not quitters or malingerers who damaged the non-quitters. Doing things like that was simply not honest and again, shows very juvenile attitudes applied to the situation.


There is a Northeast Veterans Day Parade this Sunday at 1pm on Eagle Rock Blvd. Franklin and Eagle Rock usually have their football players appear in the parade in some form as part of the each schools entry. I really don't know whether the ERHS team would have much to be proud of this season to show up, but keeping all of them out would punish the ones who were not blameworthy, and I don't know what that would be in numbers.


I don't think the complainers would want to be in the parade anyway, so that may sort itself out. The rest of the students, as well, already know just who is doing what in this. A good transition season could have come to ERHS even if they lost every game- but, sadly, this situation and tainted season will just be another part of ERHS history.

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LHS FOOTBALL Results up to 11-7-08:

09/12/08 vs Huntington Park High School ........W 34 - 17

09/19/08 vs Fairfax High School ...................................L 8 - 20

09/26/08 @ South Gate High School ...............W 27 - 0

10/03/08 @ Manual Arts High School ...............W 32 - 0

10/10/08 @ Los Angeles High School ..............W 31 - 6

10/17/08 @ Eagle Rock Jr/Sr. High School .........................L 14 - 35

10/24/08 @ Belmont Senior High School ..........W 20 - 14

10/31/08 vs John Marshall High School ............W 27 - 24

11/7/08 vs. Franklin High School ....................................L 29 - 20

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