FELTON — The track and cross-country coach at San Lorenzo Valley High has been fired after a parent from a rival team reported he had used an eighth-grader in a relay.
Jay Avenmarg, in his sixth year as coach, was removed last week, just days before the league finals.
He said he didn’t regret his infraction, allowing the runner from San Lorenzo Valley Middle School to compete on the girls’ mile relay team during the high school track meet against Santa Cruz on April 15.
“I told my athletics director I planned on doing it and he said, ‘Don’t do that, there will be serious consequences if you do,’” said Avenmarg. “I only have myself to blame. I knew the consequences of my actions.”
He continued, “And I’d do it again. I don’t regret it.”
He said he made the decision not to gain an athletic advantage, but to provide an opportunity to compete. “I had seven girls who wanted to run,” he said. “Rather than telling three kids they couldn’t run, I told one she could.”
When he made the decision, he said, Santa Cruz High didn’t have an entry in the mile relay. He put together two squads, distributing the varsity standouts to make for a competitive race. Santa Cruz later added a team to the relay race, and it beat both SLV squads by 50 meters.
Avenmarg said if he wanted the win, he could’ve stacked one squad and “blown them away.”
The coach said he felt bad for middle school athletes, who had their season canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said he entered an SLV Middle School athlete in another Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League race earlier this season. He declined to name the date and opponent.
“I definitely broke rules at SLV to try to benefit a kid,” he said. “I was trying to do the right thing for the kids.”
His one regret, he said, was that he was removed before the league championships, on April 24.
SLV principal Jeff Calden and athletic director Chris Coulson couldn’t be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
Bill Johnson, who co-coached the Cougars with Avenmarg, takes over the program.
SLV track has produced two Central Coast Section girls runner-up team finishes, 12 girls event winners and six boys winners. The cross country program has won 11 CCS Division IV girls team titles and produced five individual champions and the boys have won two CCS D-IV titles with three individual champs.
Avenmarg is himself a 1983 alumnus of San Lorenzo Valley. He went on to compete for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in ’86-87.
He said he has received an outpouring of support from Cougars athletes and their families.
“The whole program was amazing and Jay was our fearless leader,” said Christine Dindia, mother of two children who competed for Avenmarg. “Three-hundred and sixty days a year, he made himself available for our children. And that means something to grumpy teenagers who want to get out of the house.”
“The timing of this is horrible, before the league finals, CCS and Arcadia,” Cougars parent Rick Rosenquist said. “These kids will have no guidance before the biggest meets of their careers. I get it, he broke the rules. But firing for this was way overkill.
“Maybe discipline him, a suspension or forfeit the meet. The football team got busted for headsets in the helmets and they’re still coaching. It feels personal. It’s hypocritical if nothing else.”
At the league championships, SLV’s girls finished second and its boys third.
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San Lorenzo Valley coach fired for letting eighth-grader compete. ‘I’d do it again,’ he says. - Santa Cruz Sentinel
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