Poly High School parents and students attended Wednesday’s Long Beach Unified school board meeting to voice outrage, frustration and despair over the Poly football team’s removal from the playoffs and what they see as inadequate communication from the school and district.
Natalia Lima, the parent of a senior who played right guard at Poly until his season was cut short last month, spoke during public comment about the “never-ending nightmare” she and her son have endured.
Lima rewound the tape to September, when six Poly football transfers were flagged for review by CIF, as The 562 reported. Poly would go on to forfeit multiple games as a result of the transfer saga, yet weeks would pass before Lima received “one of the scariest calls of my life,” she said. On October 31, she said she picked up the phone during what should have been football practice: “My son says it’s all over. No more football.”
The school administration had decided to voluntarily pull Poly from the CIF playoffs.
Lima said she drove to pick up her son and arrived to a group of sobbing players – without any adults from the football program present. Since then, she and other parents have been fighting for information and accountability, which has come out in trickles, she said.
Following public comment on Wednesday, Superintendent Jill Baker read a statement that had been released to the Poly community earlier that day. Baker said that the district had conducted an internal investigation into violations of CIF Bylaw 202, which has to do with player eligibility, and “confirmed that three coaches engaged in unethical conduct” inconsistent with CIF rules.
Of those, two had been relieved of all coaching duties, Baker said, and one, Justin Utupo, had resigned, according to reporting by The 562.
But in interviews with the Long Beach Post, multiple parents and players called the district’s statement insufficient.
“Our issue isn’t the reason why we’ve been sanctioned or why we’ve gotten in trouble,” said parent Derek Bordeaux. Rather, he is frustrated with the lack of clear, timely, transparent communication from the school and district.
Bordeaux has had four sons and two nephews go through the Poly football program. All of them, except for his youngest son, a current senior, have earned CIF championship rings, Bordeaux said. Now, his son won’t get the chance. The football banquet is canceled, and awards from the season may arrive in the mail, he said. He said his son is heartbroken.
Poly athletes are “being punished by the selfishness of adults,” he said.
Multiple parents told the Post that if information had been shared with parents and athletes in real time, students might have been able to transfer to other schools to salvage their seasons.
For Lima’s son, Demei Donahue, this year was critical. “I was trying to get my education out of this,” he said at the board meeting two weeks prior. “This is some people’s only ticket out.” Last night, he said he’s considering not playing football at all — the playoffs would have been an opportunity to show colleges what he is capable of.
The sense of community and caring for athletes that drew Bronson Diaz to play for Poly has “vanished,” he said. The firing of coaches does not make up for what happened, he said, echoing other adults in the Poly community, including Lima and Ana Meni, who spoke at the board meeting two weeks ago.
Meni asked if this was a broader issue reflective of how the Poly athletic director and administration operate, a problem that could continue to affect athletes next year and beyond — one that would not be solved by the removal of coaches.
Across both board meetings, parents and students asked the school board and district, often through tears, what options these student-athletes would have next year and how the district would ensure this never happened again.
In line with California law, when members of the public spoke on items not on the agenda, board members remained silent in the face of these questions. The district’s general counsel, Jeffrey Riel, acknowledged that a request had been submitted to add an item related to Poly football to last night’s agenda. Lima told the Post that the request came from her — and added that she was told she had not submitted it in time.