More Bad News For Taft – Are They Running a Dirty Program?
Taft High School
It’s funny, I am not a huge football fan per se, but I do follow it. I have never been that into high school football, but I am trying to come up to speed on it for the completeness of the community aspect of this blog.
I cam across a story on Monday in the LA Times Sports Blog about a Westlake player named Michael Bercovici who transferred to Taft. The article had this line in it that caught my eye, “He’s living in an apartment next to Taft.” I sat on it at the time because I wanted to see how it would play out. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to analyze that and realize that someone – perhaps his parents, perhaps not – is paying for an apartment for this kid to most likely pretend to live in so that he’s eligible to attend Taft.
Well it looks like I wasn’t the only one who smelled a dead fish on this one, because according the the LA Times Sports Blog, City Section Commissioner Barbara Feige declared Bercovici ineligible for yesterday’s game against Serra of Gardena.
I suggest you guys check out the Blog entry on the LA Times site, but for the sake of my analysis I’m going to quote it here:
Michael Bercovici, a junior quarterback who transferred from Westlake Village Westlake to Woodland Hills Taft on Monday, was not cleared to play for the Toreadors on Friday because City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege is still determining whether he has a valid change of residence while reviewing whether there was athletic motivation in his transfer.
It’s the latter that could leave him ineligible for this season. Westlake officials are not expected to challenge his transfer, but they have to answer questions from Fiege, and when it comes to asking about the quarterback competition he was in with junior Nick Isham, it might become clear that Bercovici had lost out on winning the starting job, then suddenly left.
– Eric Sondheimer
I find it pretty surprising that someone would transfer from a high school in a compeltely different county to another just to play high school football, but a friend of mine tells me this is very common. Starting in a quality high school program can mean the difference between playing at a good college, making it into the NFL, etc. etc.
But, either way, it’s against the rules, and since it’s pretty transparent, Bercovici should probably be declared ineligible for the season. Doh.
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Taft Drops to 2-3 After Loss to Serra of Gardena in Overtime
From the Daily News:
GARDENA – Superb defense and two perfect passes completed Taft High of Woodland Hills’ comeback from a 17-point deficit Friday night, but it wasn’t enough to sustain the Toreadors when overtime arrived.
Sorry to all you Taft loyalists out there, but I suggest you become El Camino Real fans this year.
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El Camino Real Hands Panorama City Humiliating 47-0 Defeat
Well, it looks like their wonderboy Malcolm Thomas wasn’t able to make a dent in the Conquistador’s armor last night, as the early morning news wires are reporting a humilating 47-0 loss for the Pythons.
Looks like the El Camino Conquistadors easily roll to a 5-0 record.
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