If you can’t beat ‘em… kick ‘em out

Thursday, Feb. 25, 1999 | 9:23 a.m.

But a group of Nevada high schools, tired of losing state championships to league foes just across the California border, have a different idea.

If you can't beat 'em, kick 'em out.

In this case, the interlopers are two California high schools that squared off last spring for the boy's state basketball title - North Tahoe and Tahoe-Truckee.

The Nevada state title, that is.

The two schools, because of their close proximity to Nevada, compete in the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association - at least for now.

Truckee won the basketball title and went on to capture Nevada's 3A football championship in November as well - the fourth time in the 1990s that the California school has claimed bragging rights as the best 3A team in Nevada.

The crusade to boot the schools from the NIAA is led by Jeff Knutson, football coach at Moapa Valley High School in Overton, about 40 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

His team lost the semifinals this year to Truckee, 36-6.

"I'm tired of explaining to parents why we have to travel 1,000 miles round trip to Truckee, Calif., to play a California team for a Nevada championship," Knutson told Nevada Prep magazine.

Over the past three months, the weekly publication covering high school sports in Nevada has been filled with interviews and letters to the editor pushing one side or the other.

"We were in the league for 10 years and nobody said a word until we started winning," Truckee principal Dennis LeBlanc said. "Now everybody thinks we're the Evil Empire."

The push to evict the Californians comes up "every time we win something," LeBlanc said. Between them, Truckee and North Tahoe won six of the seven 3A state athletic championships contested last fall.

"The bottom line is that they don't like it when a California school wins a Nevada championship," LeBlanc said.

The California schools say sending them back to the Golden State would be a financial hardship in terms of travel expenses, not to mention the dangerous winter travel in the Sierra Nevada.

Knutson doesn't buy it.

"There are six schools in California that are farther north than them ... that travel farther over far more dangerous roads than Interstate 80, and they're not dying," he said. "If you choose to live in those places, that's what you deal with."

NIAA officials say there's no formal proposal before them, but the issue could come up at a statewide meeting in Reno this week. A two-thirds majority is required to remove a school from the association.

LeBlanc and Don Beno, principal of North Tahoe High School in Tahoe City, Calif., wrote an open letter "to the northern Nevada high school sports community" in the magazine based in Carson City.

"Our coaches and student athletes have seen great sacrifices pay off with success. Yet we are confronted with the perception of some that our success was somehow not earned.

"Some of those who would have us removed from the NIAA have projected our schools' programs as heartless machines who are depriving Nevada schools of what they feel is justly theirs.

"Even though we are not Nevadans, we feel proud when we have the opportunity to represent Nevada and try to do so in a manner that would make all Nevadans proud.

"If the majority of Nevadans do not want us participating in NIAA competition, we will leave."

Knutson, convinced most schools want the Californians out, persuaded the NIAA to survey schools on the question.

The results among 3A coaches and administrators who participated were 125 to 107 (or 54 percent) in favor of removing the California schools.

Ray De Palma, principal at Virgin Valley, is among the backers of the effort to evict the Californians.

"It's not the Nevada-slash-California league. It's the Nevada league," De Palma said. "I've felt that way ever since I was at Tonopah and we were in a state championship game against North Tahoe at North Tahoe. How can a Nevada state title game be played in California?"

Knutson, who formed the Nevada Coalition for Nevada Athletes, warned that the Californians could be subjected to verbal abuse and crowd-control problems if they overstay their unwelcome.

LeBlanc said he won't respond to the "veiled threats."

"We are not going to be bullied out," he said.

While the eviction effort has centered on the 3A schools, there is some support for making all California schools ineligible for Nevada championships. That would include Coleville in Class 1A, Needles in 2A and South Tahoe in 4A.

Sue Randolph, a parent of an athlete in Coleville, Calif., said the schools "are more a part of Nevada than California.

"We contribute to the economy of Nevada. We shop, bank and play in Nevada. Our kids have grown up playing sports in Nevada leagues. The kids are friends, if the adults would ever leave them alone.

"It sounds to me ... that you, the coalition, are a bunch of poor sports who have come up with a poor excuse to get rid of your competition."