Caught in the Cross-Fire : With Discharged Football Coach Casting Heaviest Stones, St. Genevieve Is Accused of Multitude of Sins

PANORAMA CITY —  With the demolition of the old auditorium, St. Genevieve High officially broke ground Sunday on the construction of a gymnasium, something the Catholic school has done without since it opened in 1959.

But some parents and former St. Genevieve employees say it will take more than a bulldozer to dismantle the wall of bureaucracy that has surrounded the campus in recent years.

Jeff Trovatten has been banging his head against that wall for the past several months, seeking answers related to his firing in February after one season as St. Genevieve football coach.

Trovatten, 41, has written several letters to Catholic school officials asking for details about an alleged hazing incident that supposedly occurred under his supervision. Trovatten, who claims such an incident never took place, wants to clear his name after Athletic Director John Yakel was quoted in a Los Angeles Daily News story in February saying that a hazing “did happen.”

“I’m not trying to get my job back,” Trovatten said. “But if they are going to make that accusation, they better be able to prove it. As a Catholic church, where they are supposedly dealing with the Lord, truth should be right at the top of the list. You don’t run away from it.”

Yakel declined to comment about the alleged hazing. He said Trovatten was not rehired because of a “difference of philosophy.”

Trovatten and others contend the controversy stems from bigger problems at the school. They say the administration under Principal Maria C. Denis runs St. Genevieve in an uncompromising manner that has contributed to the school’s high turnover rate among teachers and its steady decline in student enrollment. The troubles have sparked rumblings of dissatisfaction.

“It’s a bad, bad situation,” said a former St. Genevieve teacher who requested anonymity because of the fear of retaliation. “The fact is, she is not a good principal.”

Denis, a Texas native who became principal in 1990, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Moreover, a secretary at the school said she was told by Denis not to make any comments to a reporter.

Monsignor Charles Hill, pastor of St. Genevieve Church, would not comment on Trovatten’s grievance or on Denis’ competency, saying, “The press is not the place to be discussing job performance. I have absolutely no confidence in the objectivity and honesty of the press.”

Denis’ detractors say St. Genevieve suffers from a lack of accountability, fiscal mismanagement and low morale among faculty members. Several sources said the school annually loses an average of 40% of its teachers and has seen its enrollment drop by more than 200 students to fewer than 450 since Denis became principal.

“I’m really disappointed in the way the school has gone athletically and academically in the last five or six years,” said Christine Muller, a mother of 11 who will have two sons at St. Genevieve this year. “They have lost a lot of good teachers. I feel something is lacking in the administration.”

A St. Genevieve football player unwittingly demonstrated the lack of communication that exists at the school. Contacted last week, he said he didn’t know Trovatten had been fired.

“I didn’t get a reason,” said the player, who didn’t want his name used. “That’s messed up. I think he was a pretty good coach.”

On the day he learned of his firing, Trovatten says, Yakel told him a parent had called the school to complain that six football players had subjected a fellow player to hazing while they were under Trovatten’s supervision. Trovatten does not remember any such incident and says he was never given the names of the students involved. Because no students were suspended, Trovatten thinks the story was concocted to prompt his dismissal.

“I was never given any explanation or due process,” Trovatten said.

Frustrated by the situation, Trovatten went to Denis seeking to have the hazing incident removed from his personnel file. When that failed, he wrote letters of grievance to Monsignor Hill and various officials in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

All of the responses were basically the same as the one he received from Barbara Brown, associate superintendent of secondary schools for the Archdiocese. It read, in part: “Ms. Maria Denis, principal of St. Genevieve High School, was correct in stating that St. Genevieve is under no obligation to give cause or reason for the non-renewal of a first-year football coach. The grievance process, therefore, does not apply in your situation.”

Under rules of the Archdiocese, teachers with less than three years of service can be dismissed without a reason.

But Trovatten argues his grievance isn’t about his firing. It is about clearing his name of the hazing accusation.

A former St. Genevieve teacher said Trovatten was the victim of a “trumped-up charge.”

“I’m 100% in support of Jeff,” the teacher said. “He should clear his name. He did nothing wrong.”

But a parent said the hazing incident probably did occur, though not with Trovatten present.

“I think it happened,” the parent said. “But was that enough to fire a coach? I don’t think so. . . . I think somebody was waiting for something to happen.”

Trovatten reportedly was on the hot seat because the football team did poorly, finishing 1-9, and because he was asking too many questions about the school’s athletic budget.

“He was asking questions which many people have asked,” the parent said. “Because of that, he put himself in a very bad light.”

Trovatten acknowledged he frequently requested to see the school’s athletic budget so he would know how much money was in the football account. Those requests were never met, he said.

“I never saw a [budget] statement,” said Trovatten, who majored in business at the University of Redlands and wrote a paper on fund-raising in youth sports. “I was doing fund-raising, bringing money in, but when I asked Yakel how much money I had, he told me I didn’t have any. I said, ‘Wait a minute. Where is all this money going?’

“I raised this issue with the principal on more than one occasion. She would say that John Yakel runs the athletic department. . . . Looking at the principal and athletic director, I don’t feel they are qualified to do their jobs.”

Yakel would not comment on the budget.

The atmosphere of secrecy surrounding the situation was no surprise to Richard Fong, the athletic director and football coach at St. Genevieve for three years before resigning in the spring of 1994.

Fong, now an assistant coach and teacher at Crespi, says he never saw a breakdown of the athletic budget at St. Genevieve. He said it wasn’t until the spring of his first year at the school that Denis told him the athletic department operated on an annual budget of $50,000.

Also, in 1992, the school disbanded its athletic booster club without explanation, taking away an additional source of revenue.

Although Fong was a successful coach at St. Genevieve, guiding the Valiants to a 9-3 record in 1993, he decided to leave the school after he was fired as athletic director.

“[Denis] told me they wanted to take the athletic department in another direction,” Fong said. “I asked them what direction they wanted to go. . . . That was never explained to me.”

Fong has mixed feelings about his time at St. Genevieve, saying some memories are happy but others are “like picking at a scab.”

“There’s a lot of good people at the school and I liked the kids,” he said. “But it’s a different style of management than what I was used to. I don’t know if I’m in a position to say if it’s successful or not.”

Fong said Denis is in a difficult situation because the area surrounding St. Genevieve has become less desirable to families because of problems with gangs and graffiti.

Twice while he worked at the school, Fong said, he had to hold back a gate with other teachers to keep gang members from entering the campus to settle disputes with students.

But gang problems are only part of St. Genevieve’s image troubles. The school has the lowest tuition ($2,700 a year) of any Catholic school in the Valley and a limited curriculum.

Athletically it ranks near the bottom, in part because the school has no sports facilities on campus. The Valiants must use parks or other schools to hold home games. That situation will change with the building of the gymnasium, which is expected to be completed next spring.

“When I first got hired, things were very rundown,” Fong said.

The situation improved by Fong’s second year, but matters regressed when Trovatten took over.

The first day he stepped into the football office, Trovatten discovered that videotapes of every 1993 Valiant game were gone, as were 40 knee braces and 22 new footballs. Theft is commonplace at the school, Fong said.

For Trovatten, who previously worked as an assistant at Hart, Saugus, Cleveland and Crespi, the situation only got worse through an injury-plagued season and his run-ins with the administration over the hazing charge.

“If they would have come to me and said, ‘Hey, Jeff, we don’t want you here,’ fine. I can’t complain about that,” Trovatten said. “But they almost have a smug attitude about it: ‘Also, we’re going to throw this at you and see what you do about it.’ ”