SoCalHoops High School News

What's Going On At Montclair Prep?
Chaos, Chaos & More Chaos--(Jan 20, 1999)

We've been hearing about strange goings-on at Montclair Prep lately.  Recall that longtime coach Howard Abrams was not asked to return to his 22 year head coaching position at the beginning of the school year for reasons which were never fully made clear to him by the head of the school.  Recall also that Howard Abrams had led Montclair Prep to the playoffs in D-V virtually every year this decade, and that his teams had won the State D-V title several years back in addition to two CIF Southern Section titles.  At the beginning of the school year, Howard was summarily replaced by Bobby Webb, the former girls' coach and a former UCLA player as well.

Since Webb took over, the school has slipped to a miserable 5-14 record overall, and while they won their league game last night against Whitney, a game which saw Will Sheslow (6'-0" Fr. PG/SG) score 16 points, it seems that chaos is the rule at Montclair.  Josiah Johnson (6'-4" Jr. SG/SF) who is Kris' younger brother and the son of Marcus Johnson, one of Webb's former teammates has also had a good season, but these two have been the only real bright spots on a team which seems filled with turmoil, both from the players and their parents.

Today's Daily News confirmed tidbits of a most bizarre story we heard over the weekend from sources at the school.  If this is only half-true, it's one of the strangest things we've heard all season. It seems that one of the team players missed the December tournaments, deciding to take a family vacation instead. Not surprisingly, the player's time was somewhat limited in the first few weeks of January while he attempted to work his way back into the rotation.   The player's father apparently became enraged about what he viewed as a punitive action by the coach and complained about the playing time his son was receiving.

Now if this is where the story ended we'd all just write it off to an over-involved parent, and it wouldn't be newsworthy at all.  But in this case, the parent of the affected player allegedly telephoned Webb at his home, and reportedly said some pretty harsh things.   Words were exchanged, a heated conversation which lasted more than an hour ensued, and the conversation didn't go well.   The parent reportedly wasn't satisfied.   Well, we hear that after Webb hung up the phone, the disgruntled parent put his fax machine on automatic call-back, and kept ringing Webb's number for most of the day.  Apparently some words were again exchanged before Montclair Prep's game last Thursday, and Webb simply had enough. 

So he walked out on the team and refused to coach the game. 

Not surprisingly, Montclair Prep lost again.

Walked out on the team.  Amazing. Pathetic. Sad.

From all we can gather, this is a program in disarray. Whether Webb can bring it under control and who will be left to play next year is really an open question.  Too bad. What a shame.

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