Westchester Presents Its Case to Panel

Westchester High sought to overturn sanctions against its state-champion boys’ basketball program Friday during an emotional appeal hearing in which conflicting evidence was presented.

A three-person City Section panel heard two hours of testimony from parents, students and representatives of Westchester and Los Angeles Verbum Dei at the downtown meeting. A decision is expected to be announced next week.

Last month, the section’s rules committee banned Westchester from postseason play for one year after ruling that an assistant coach recruited 6-foot-9 junior center Amir Johnson from Verbum Dei. Johnson was declared ineligible for giving false testimony and assistant Marlon Morton was barred from coaching at any City Section school for one year.

On Friday, Westchester Principal Dana Perryman presented a timeline that she said made it “highly unlikely” that Johnson, because of a heavy tournament schedule and summer-school classes, could have had contact with Morton in Verbum Dei’s gymnasium last summer.

Johnson, who was accompanied by his parents and a lawyer, said he never talked to Morton until after he enrolled at Westchester in November. Morton has repeatedly denied the recruiting allegation.

However, two Verbum Dei administrators reiterated their testimony that they saw Morton with Johnson in the school’s gym. Vernon Owens, Verbum Dei’s dean of students, repeated that he overheard Morton telling Johnson to transfer during an open-gym workout last summer.

“They have an attorney, we don’t have an attorney,” Owens said. “All we have is the truth.”

But determining the truth won’t be easy for the appeals panel. Friday’s hearing was laced with accusations from both sides, which are sharply divided along school affiliations.

Among those who testified for Westchester was Arizona guard Hassan Adams, a former Westchester and Verbum Dei player in town to play USC and UCLA. Adams attempted to contradict the statement of a Verbum Dei administrator that placed him in Verbum Dei’s gym “around mid-June, early July.” Adams claimed he was in Arizona at the time.

“There’s no impartial person here,” Westchester Coach Ed Azzam said. “Our problem with the rules committee’s decision is they chose to believe Verbum Dei and they chose to call us liars without any substantiated proof.”

The sanctions were severe because Westchester, the two-time defending state Division I champion, was already on probation for “pre-enrollment contact” with an athlete in 2002.

Panel chairman Bud Jacobs, director of high school programs for Los Angeles Unified School District, said the panel had four options: uphold the original ruling, overturn it, modify it, or kick the matter back to the rules committee because of new information presented Friday. Mary Kaufman, co-principal of Los Angeles High, and Elena Anthony, assistant principal at Dorsey, are the other panel members.

If Westchester’s effort fails, it can appeal to the California Interscholastic Federation state office.