Junior Football Players Sacked Too

SANTA ANA —  It’s been a roller-coaster couple of weeks for the Garden Grove/Anaheim Chargers, a football team of 12- to 14-year-olds who have suffered alternating rounds of elation and sadness.

On Nov. 1, the Orange County Junior All American Football League barred the team from the playoffs as punishment for an Oct. 28 bench-clearing brawl at Santiago High School, where the Chargers had just played the Orange County Packers.

Contending that the punishment was too severe, the Chargers and their coaches filed suit and won a court order Nov. 7 reinstating them to the competition. But on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed the order, declaring the league’s action as valid.

The ruling leaves the Chargers no time to appeal to a higher court, said attorney Mark G. Lerner. Their playoffs are on Saturday. So when team members were told the news at their Wednesday night practice, several of the boys wept.

“It’s just so sad,” said Lerner, whose father is the team’s head coach. “It teaches the boys a very poor sense of justice and it teaches them that wrongs cannot necessarily be righted. It’s like my father says: ‘Some punishments fit the crime. Other punishments are the crime.’ ”

At a Superior Court hearing on Nov. 22, Lerner will try to persuade a judge to allow the boys to attend the Friendship Bowl in San Leandro Dec. 9.