Guards sidelined this week

While sleet and snow cannot stop delivery of the mail, apparently

not filing the correct paperwork can halt the playing of a high

school football game.

A paperwork snafu is the reason Bell-Jeff officials said today’s 1

p.m. nonleague game at Los Angeles High has been canceled.

Bell-Jeff Coach Rolando Aguirre said specific paperwork had to be

filed out with the California Interscholastic Federation because Los

Angeles is a City Section school and Bell-Jeff is a CIF Southern

Section school. However, Aguirre said officials at Los Angeles failed

to turn in the papers on time, which means the game cannot be played.

“I’m really upset,” said Aguirre, whose Guards lost their season

opener a week ago, 21-6, to visiting Santa Clara High. “I can’t

believe they would do this.”

Aguirre added he checked several times with Los Angeles officials

to make sure the game would be played, but to no avail.

“I called their athletic director last Friday,” he said. “He

assured me the paperwork would be there. I checked again with the

assistant principal for athletics and he said the paperwork had not

cleared. So there’s no game.”

Calls to Los Angeles High were not returned.

Aguirre said he and the team are very eager to get back on the

gridiron, especially after having such a difficult first game in

which penalties and turnovers severely affected the Guards’

performance.

“We retooled everything,” he said. “We worked on a lot of things.

Now, we have to wait another week to play.”

In addition, since Bell-Jeff has a bye week the ninth week of the

season, Aguirre said he is already looking to find a team to play

that week.

“It’s very hard right now to find a team to play for that ninth

week,” Bell-Jeff Boys’ Athletic Director Mike Morgan said. “Most of

the teams are already booked up, and very few have open weeks.

“If we do find a game, it will probably be against a team from San

Diego or Northern California.”

Although it appears the reason for the cancellation of this week’s

game rests mostly with Los Angeles High, it is yet to be determined

if the game will count in the standings as a forfeit, which would

give Bell-Jeff a victory by default.

Bell-Jeff’s next game is 7 p.m. Sept. 24 against Flintridge Prep

in a nonleague game at Duarte High.

Jeff Tully contributed to this story