High School Athletics

It was a curious way to end up in a no-win situation. Westlake Village Oaks Christian High's football team has pounded all comers by an average of 35 points in eight varsity seasons. The Lions recently won 48 consecutive games and have a current streak of five consecutive league and Southern Section titles. And as a result, no one wants to play them. Their rivals in the Tri-Valley League wish them gone yesterday. Their proposed opponents in the Marmonte League want no part of them.

It took three years of tinkering and experimenting, but the CIF state football championship bowl games are here to stay, and they've helped create an exciting new era in high school football. There's a new realization taking hold among the stakeholders in California: You can't claim to be the best unless you're willing to play the best. It means any team that aspires to play in a bowl game can't simply rely on going unbeaten and winning a section title as evidence it deserves an invitation.

SILENCE. In the air was a symphony. Shoulder pads thumped and helmets cracked as Shawn McDonald and his teammates slammed into each other. But for Shawn, all was silence. The quarterback tripped and tumbled. The fullback plowed into a defender and fell to his knees. The coaches slapped their thighs in frustration. Everything made noise, but Shawn could not hear a thing. He was a lineman, a high school football player pounding and thudding through another hard practice.

For generations it has been one of the great American axioms, accepted truth on diamonds, courts and gridirons everywhere: Sports builds character, instilling the values of teamwork and good sportsmanship. But amid fresh headlines of alleged cheating in auto racing, continuing controversies over steroid use in baseball, track and cycling and ugly brawls among basketball players comes a nationwide survey suggesting a decidedly darker vision of sports.

A ban on booing? The idea has drawn a lot of jeers here. Amid concerns that unruly and profane fans are degrading high school sportsmanship, the association that oversees competition in Washington state is considering revisions to its code of conduct for spectators. And, after one Seattle newspaper reported over the weekend that it was considering a new "boo ban," the organization found itself enmeshed in controversy -- and flooded with phone calls -- over the concept.

Texas is poised to become the first state to randomly test high school athletes for steroids -- the most dramatic step yet in a nationwide backlash against the dangerous muscle-building drugs that have infested locker rooms across America. The Texas Senate this month approved a measure to test 3% of the state's 740,000 high school athletes, or about 22,000 boys and girls, for steroids every year.

In the wake of reports that high school basketball prospects are padding their grades at diploma mills to earn college scholarships, NBA Commissioner David Stern, to his credit, is addressing this problem. One idea that has found traction is to establish a national basketball academy. The school would train future pros and Olympians in academics as well as the fundamentals of the game.

Nancy Ramirez can't help it. She cringes every time she watches her daughter, Mission Viejo Trabuco Hills senior Heather Ramirez, do an inward or backward dive off a one- or three-meter springboard. "From the perspective of where you're sitting, it looks really close, like they're going to hit the board," she said while watching the Southern Section Division I diving championships earlier this month.

Public high school athletes would face mandatory random steroid testing under a bill given final approval by the Legislature in Austin and sent to Gov. Rick Perry. If Perry allows the bill to become law -- he has not publicly expressed opposition -- the state could begin testing tens of thousands of students at the start of the coming football season. It would be the largest high school steroids testing program in the country.

When she competes, Allison Stokke's entire focus is the path in front of her, a narrow stretch of crushed rock leading to a bar balancing between stanchions that soar toward the sky. And when she dashes down that runway, her hands grasping a 13-foot pole that will propel her, head over heels, she doesn't even notice the explosion of flashes from hundreds of cameras focused on her.