Archdiocese could have prevented Bishop Montgomery sports scandal
There is another sports scandal in current Catholic schools, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was apparently the only one who did not see it coming.
On Saturday, Mgr Montgomery de Torrance announced that the co-athletic football coach Ed Hodgkiss was no longer employed by the school.
In other words, he was dismissed.
He will apparently be the autumn guy for five students from Bishop Montgomery who are declared ineligible by the southern section, several suspensions from Muly Montgomery imposed after the players left the bench with 24 seconds to play in a loss in Hawaii and the Bishop Montgomery who was to deteriorate to the n ° 1 Dei on Friday due to the absence of players.
Residents of the Southern California football community have been talking about Mgr Montgomery for months because they have seen a transfer after another welcomed school. Officials of the South section waited for weeks to receive transfers documents. Five players were declared in violation of CIF Regulation 202, which includes the provision of false information.
If a school trying to quickly improve its football program with shortcuts seems familiar, it is.
In 2020, St. Bernard turned to the former coach of Narbonne Manuel Douglas, who won eight titles from the city. Douglas was forced to Narbonne and did not lead to 2019 after a nine -month investigation in the unified school district of Los Angeles. Narbonne was prohibited from the 2019 playoffs and forced to lose its 2018 city title for the use of an ineligible player.
Douglas then resigned in the spring of 2020 when he was investigated by the FBI and the IRS on the money received from a Booster from Narbonne to pay a trip to Hawaii while training in Narbonne.
Saint-Bernard filed its football program in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Last week, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese wrote in an email in response to an update request on Mgr Montgomery: “The investigation is underway and there are no developments to share for the moment.
Last spring, the new director of Bishop Montgomery, Michele Starkey, was questioned by the Times during a telephone call, whose participants included the president of the new school Patrick Lee, if she was aware of any involvement by the same Booster of Narbonne linked to the resignation of Douglas in the program of Bishop Montgomery. She said no.
The archdiocese should start its investigation right there. Players do not suddenly start from all over South California for no reason.
The lessons have not been learned. The players of the Bishop Montgomery team last year saw what was going on and transferred. Maybe the archdiocese should ask them what was going on.
A parent from Bishop Montgomery wrote in a letter to Times: “The return players have been demoted, excluded from trips or leave;
The messages left for Hodgkiss and Lee on Saturday were not returned.
It is another big waste for the archdiocese of Los Angeles to clean, and it was very avoidable if lessons from the past had been learned.
