Narbonne High’s appeal to reduce football playoff ban is denied

Despite a passionate and eloquent plea from Narbonne High principal Andrew Kasek, the City Section Executive Committee voted 6-4 on Thursday to deny an appeal to reduce the school’s three-year football playoff ban for rule violations during the 2024 season.

The rejection means the Gauchos will be ineligible for the playoffs for a second straight year. There’s a recommendation by the committee for Kasek to return in 2027 to evaluate whether the third year of the playoff ban should be eliminated. Committee members were concerned that this wasn’t the first time Narbonne had broken rules, with the team also being banned in 2019.

Kasek became Narbonne’s principal last year with the message from the Los Angeles Unified School District to end the football scandals.

“When they gave me the keys, they said there’s been two athletic scandals, there will not be a third,” he said.

There’s a new athletic director, a new coach and new policies on transfers, with Kasek approving all transfer paperwork.

“This will get done correctly because I won’t let people down,” he told committee members. “I was brought in to fix this problem and it’s fixed. I’ve worked hard in two years to improve climate and culture.”

Committee members voiced approval at Kasek’s changes, but a majority was not convinced the culture could be changed in such a short time based on past experiences involving Narbonne alumni asserting influence in the program. One example of the problems involved school police investigating why the City Section championship trophy went missing in 2024 after the school had been forced to vacate the title. In 2019, after another title was vacated, the trophy went missing until being discovered in 2021 in a trash bin.

In its deliberations, several committee members said the players and administration are new and should not be punished for the past actions of others.

“Why are they accountable when they had zero involvement?” one committee member asked.

The fact that Narbonne received six football transfers this year, several from the same area in Gardena, raised concerns among some committee members.

Kasek assured the committee that one former booster who allegedly was heavily involved in the previous rule violations has been told to stay away from the program. “He came to one game, sat on the visitor’s side,’’ Kasek said. A friend of the booster passed along the message that the booster felt bad. “I gave him a pat on his back, [and said] ‘Not at my school.’”

Kasek said the issues involved with 2024 rule violations occurred because of a “lack of athletic experience” from administrators on campus. The team went 0-10 last year and is 1-2 this season under first-year coach Patrick Goodpaster, a lieutentant in the Gardena police department in charge of homicides.

In 2024, coaches in the Marine League decided to forfeit all games to the Gauchos in an attempt to convince LAUSD to launch an investigation. Sanctions did not happen until after Narbonne had won the City Open Division title and participated in the state playoffs.