California dreamers

LOS ANGELES -- Violent gangs menace the streets around John C. Fremont High School, a heavily guarded compound in an impoverished swath of this shimmering city. But after 29 years coaching basketball there, Sam Sullivan said he fears no evil.

''I get respect," he said. ''Whether it's from the gangbangers or what they call the OGs, the original gangsters."

Sullivan said he worries instead about whether Fremont's students will live to see another day. The casualty list grew 16 months ago when a 14-year-old Fremont student was shot 20 times and killed by reputed gang members despite pleading on his knees for his life just blocks from the school in South Central Los Angeles.

''If you go down the street three blocks in one direction and have on the wrong colors, you might get shot," Sullivan said at the school last month. ''And if you go up five blocks the other way, you might get shot."

Yet this is where three Boston teenagers chased a dream, leaving behind their families in Mattapan and Roxbury last fall to pursue a new opportunity -- maybe their last -- to make it big in basketball. Their 3,000-mile odyssey reflected the powerful allure of the loosely regulated summer basketball universe on aspiring young athletes, as the Boston teens made the journey both to play for Sullivan and try to advance from a regional summer program in Massachusetts to an elite national traveling team based in Los Angeles.

In a rare gambit that ended badly this week when the California Interscholastic Federation revoked their athletic eligibility, Troy Gillenwater and LeRoyal Hairston transferred to Fremont from Charlestown High School, where they played for last year's Division 2 state championship team, while Orion Outerbridge joined them from Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill after a brief turn at Brighton High School.

All three left town hoping in part to gain national exposure and enhance their chances of landing coveted college basketball scholarships. Individuals familiar with them said each found a home in the Fremont school district, Gillenwater with his godmother, Hairston with a Fremont teammate, and Outerbridge with a host family.

The three juniors made a memorable impact, leading Fremont to a 22-3 record (10-0 in their highly competitive city league) and a playoff berth, as Gillenwater won MVP honors at the Pasadena Rose City Tournament and established himself as one of the best big players in the Los Angeles public schools.

But their new start went sour after the state federation determined the Boston youths were among six Fremont players who violated transfer rules, providing false information in the process. Two other players transferred from New York and another from elsewhere in California, according to Jeff Halpern, a federation official.

Gillenwater and Outerbridge went west from Mattapan, Hairston from Roxbury.

''From the preponderance of evidence in their paperwork alone, we determined that there was too much going on that didn't smell right," Halpern said yesterday of the six students.

As a result, the federation ordered Fremont to withdraw from the tournament and forfeit every game in which the players participated, effectively the entire season. Halpern said none of the principals fully cooperated with the inquiry.

Gillenwater, however, made significant progress before the ruling, drawing interest from a number of Division 1 college coaches, including Arizona's Lute Olson, who recently met with him on the Fremont campus.

Gillenwater's mother, Tracey Copeland, said in an interview before her son was ruled ineligible that he received no such attention from colleges when he played for Charlestown. Gillenwater, who is 6 feet 7 inches and 230 pounds, saw limited action at Charlestown, where he and Hairston grew dissatisfied with coach Jack O'Brien.

''He was having a really hard time there, his self-esteem was so low," Copeland said. ''As soon as I got a better opportunity for him, I jumped on it."

Hairston, a 6-2 guard who played a key role in Charlestown's championship run, and Outerbridge, a 6-8 forward who began playing basketball in the ninth grade, captured less attention than Gillenwater in Los Angeles. But Gregory Jackson, their former AAU coach with the Brockton Blackhawks who steered them to Fremont, portrayed the move as beneficial for all three players.

Jackson said before the federation's ruling that he directed the youths to Fremont after one of Sullivan's assistants read about the players on the Blackhawks website and contacted him. (Sullivan said last month he knew only that Jackson was acquainted with one of his assistants.) Efforts to reach Jackson and Sullivan last night were unsuccessful.

Jackson said he researched Sullivan's past and concluded the Fremont coach possessed the qualities to get the most out of the Boston youths. A self-described ''old school" coach, Sullivan has won more than 500 games at Fremont and captured three city championships. In 1991, he guided the Pathfinders to the Division 1 state title game, losing to St. Joseph Notre Dame in Alameda, led by future NBA star Jason Kidd.

''I realized he is a legendary coach," Jackson said. ''I had a lot of faith he was going to do the right thing for these kids."

Jackson also steered Gillenwater and Hairston to the H Squad, a traveling summer team whose alumni include the University of Connecticut's Marcus Williams, Maryland's Ekene Ibekwe, and Louisiana State's Brandon Bass, who made his NBA debut this season.

Travel teams such as the H Squad compete in national tournaments that expose their players to the top college coaches. Gillenwater and Hairston played for the H Squad last summer but later joined the Los Angeles Stars, which also would be poised to provide them a national showcase.

Outerbridge, who played for Jackson last summer, also was expected to play for the LA Stars.

''The biggest thing is the exposure a team like that can provide," Jackson said. ''Very few teams on the East Coast provide that kind of exposure."

Jackson said the parents of the three players had committed to paying their expenses.

O'Brien, who has coached 13 years at Charlestown and won five of the last six Division 2 state titles, described the transfers as ''awfully strange" and questioned whether he might have persuaded Gillenwater and Hairston to stay at Charlestown had his offseason influence with them not been limited by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The MIAA effectively bars high school coaches from coaching their players out of season because it could create a disadvantage for coaches and players who are unable to participate. Critics contend the rule boosts the power of summer coaches who are not bound by interscholastic regulations.

''They did have some issues," O'Brien said of his two former players. ''But no one ever said, 'Can we sit down and talk about it?' "

In Gillenwater's case, the issues stemmed largely from O'Brien tossing him off last year's team less than two weeks before the state tournament because of differences over Gillenwater's attitude and other issues. O'Brien indicated he was open to Gillenwater returning this season, but Copeland had no such interest.

Copeland said she believed O'Brien cared too little about Gillenwater as a player and a student. She said she would have welcomed O'Brien disciplining her son for his poor grades, for example, rather than punishing him over differences about his attitude toward the team. She described Gillenwater as distraught over losing his chance to play basketball at Charlestown.

''It meant everything to him," she said. ''Without basketball, I didn't know if Troy would be on the streets with all these other kids shooting each other."

O'Brien said he places great importance on education and has worked with teachers, tutors, and administrators to try to improve the academic performances of his players, including Gillenwater and Hairston. He has helped numerous players secure college basketball scholarships, including Ridley Johnson, who played last year at Charlestown and is contributing this year as a freshman at the University of Toledo.

As for Hairston, his supporters described O'Brien's withholding his championship ring last year as the final straw.

''If it was so disciplinary, then he shouldn't have played him in the [state] championship game," Jackson said. ''I had to go to the principal and other people to get [the ring] for him."

O'Brien said Hairston was one of three players he disciplined for various reasons after the state tournament by withholding their rings and barring them from participating in the annual alumni game. He said Hairston ''was not doing well" in school and had been suspended. Hairston's mother, Charmaine Hairston, declined an interview request.

''You try to make a point that it's not just about basketball," O'Brien said. ''But sometimes you can't win."

As for Outerbridge, he began playing basketball after he enrolled as a ninth-grader at Beaver Country Day School. He became a linchpin of Beaver's team as a sophomore, but he fell behind in class and was not invited back for his junior year, prompting him to enroll at Brighton. Efforts to reach his parents were unsuccessful.

By the time Fremont opened its basketball season in November, Outerbridge had told Brighton officials he was pursuing a new opportunity and followed the path blazed by Gillenwater and Hairston.

Yet the more the newly fortified Fremont team succeeded, the more it attracted scrutiny. By January, the federation launched an inquiry, compelling school officials to document the eligibility of the players.

Federation rules require student-athletes who transfer to a school to ''move with the same family unit they were with and reside in the attendance area of their new school," Halpern said. He said students are permitted to apply for hardship waivers but none of the Fremont students did so.

Sullivan, before the ruling, denied improperly recruiting or enrolling the players from Boston.

''The Fremont kids brought them on campus and showed them around and said it would be cool," Sullivan said. ''Next thing I know, [Gillenwater and Hairston] were both walking through the hallways asking where to find the attendance office."

Sullivan said his role in such cases is limited to ensuring that incoming students speak to school officials responsible for handling the paperwork for their eligibility. He said he believed the students from Boston had taken the necessary steps and were ''legit" to compete for Fremont.

''The rules are cut and dry," said Sullivan. ''You can't play with the rules."

Jackson, a regional security manager who lives in Brockton and works in Boston, expressed no regret about directing the players to Los Angeles, other than some concern about fallout from the investigation. He indicated he was particularly concerned about Hairston because he was the target of gunfire near his Roxbury home three days before he left for Los Angeles.

''If I was a selfish person, I could have kept the three of them playing for me this season and been the talk of the town," he said. ''But I chose to look out for their futures."

Two other members of Charlestown's championship team last year -- Jamal Coombs and Kevin Barr -- followed the route of many talented inner-city players by transferring to private schools. (Coombs and Barr enrolled at Lawrence Academy in Groton.) But Jackson said Gillenwater and Hairston would not have qualified academically for private schools.

He said he was willing to help the three players in ways other high school and summer coaches might not have helped.

''Most of these coaches use them for basketball and leave them by the side of the street when they're too old to play for them anymore," Jackson said. ''Then what happens? The players should get something out of it, too, like a college education."

John Kottori, the AAU boys' basketball chairman for southern New England, said he generally has respected how Jackson has run his program. But he said he would be concerned if Jackson continued to direct players to high-powered high school and summer teams across the country.

''Then he would be almost acting like a street agent," Kottori said.

Jackson said he has heard such criticism from other coaches and has dismissed it.

''Isn't about them or me," he said. ''It's about the kids."

All three youths now appear to be at a critical juncture, their immediate futures in jeopardy. And Copeland indicated before the ruling that the stakes are high.

''I have been so relieved and relaxed knowing Troy is doing well there," she said. ''I don't want him to come back to Boston and lose him to the streets."