Baldwin will not rehire
banned soccer coach
Baldwin High School won't renew the contract of head boys soccer coach Fred Guzman, principal Stephen Yamada confirmed yesterday.
In addition, the Maui Interscholastic League board voted unanimously to ban Guzman from coaching any sport in the league for five years and to place the Bears soccer team on one-year conduct probation.
Those two decisions mirrored penalties handed out by the Hawaii High School Athletic Association earlier this month.
Guzman's dismissal as coach and the league's two punitive actions are the result of an incident in which Baldwin player Eugene "Ekolu" Saffery III allegedly pushed referee Kaleo Benz to the ground after a 4-3 state tournament loss to Pearl City on Feb. 12.
Saffery, 17, faces an assault charge and the case is being investigated by the Honolulu Police Department.
The MIL board considered sanctioning all of Baldwin's sports programs, but didn't want to penalize athletes and coaches of unrelated sports.
Board members wanted to send a strong message that attacks on officials won't be tolerated and felt the incident was far more serious than other types of misconduct, such as players fighting or taunting each other.
The MIL board didn't sanction Saffery because he is a senior and not participating in any further high school sports, and it felt a coach should be held responsible for the conduct of his player.
Guzman, who previously expressed interest in appealing the HHSAA penalties, won't be supported in that endeavor by Baldwin, according to Yamada.
Efforts to obtain comments from Guzman and Saffery yesterday were unsuccessful .
A group of Baldwin parents requested a deferral of action by the board, but the request was not upheld for several reasons, including the fact that the school had already decided not to rehire Guzman.
According to Yamada, Guzman met with Baldwin administrators on several occasions and had an opportunity to explain his side.
MIL executive secretary Stephen Kim warned that all MIL teams will be monitored as though they were on conduct probation to discourage future incidents of extreme misconduct.
Baldwin High School