Football coach, AD out at Westchester

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There was no school today at Westchester but plenty of activity within the athletic department.

Longtime Athletic Director Brian Henderson was fired ‘for just cause,’ Principal Bruce Mims said, and Comets football coach Adrian Ivory resigned.

‘I did have a good reason and it’s to protect the integrity of the entire program,’ Mims said of the removal of Henderson in the middle of the school year. ‘I felt it was time to make a change for the betterment of our entire athletic program.’

Mims said the dismissal was not related to any criminal wrongdoing. Assistant Athletic Director Alonia Alexander will take Henderson’s spot on an interim basis.

Henderson could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Comets were placed on probation twice in two years under Henderson’s watch earlier this decade for violations committed by their boys’ basketball team. Henderson admitted to a City Section rules committee in 2002 that he spoke with the father of Carson player Ray Reese before Reese officially enrolled at Westchester, a violation of CIF rules.

Though Westchester’s basketball team is annually one of the best in Southern California, the school’s other athletic programs have largely underachieved.

‘Our athletic department outside of the basketball program has not performed up to its potential,’ Mims said. ‘That is not a criticism of our coaches who have done an outstanding and upstanding job of working what they have to operate with. As a whole, the leadership could move our athletic department a lot farther along than it is.’

Mims called Ivory’s resignation ‘a mutual agreement’ that the principal accepted with ‘mixed emotions.’ Ivory went 7-14 in two seasons, with the Comets finishing the 2008 season 3-7 overall and 2-3 in the Western League.

--Ben Bolch