STUDENT PLAYERS FIGHT PUNISHMENT

MANTECA -- Two 17-year-old high school students are challenging an
administrative decision to suspend them from class for five days, transfer
them to other schools and bar them from playing sports this fall.

Travis McPherson and Adam Zeiher, both students and football players at
Sierra High, claim they were intimidated into admitting they smoked
marijuana during a lunch break in May. Monday, they both insisted that they
did not smoke the drug. A disciplinary review board refused to reverse the
action even though the boys tested negative for drugs 14 days after the
incident, parents of the students said. Though two weeks had passed, the
test still could have turned up marijuana in the system.

The parents say the run-in with Manteca Unified School District's drug
policy will nullify the boys' participation in sports this fall and
jeopardize their collegiate careers.

"We think Travis has a future in college," said his father, Greg McPherson.
"To take it all away from him over this is unfair."

A secretary for MUSD Superintendent Marv Tatum said the school board plans
to discuss the matter this evening in closed session. Tatum was unavailable
for comment Monday.

On May 25, McPherson, Zeiher and two other Sierra classmates returned to
campus after a quick lunch at Zeiher's home when a school monitor stopped
them in the parking lot.

The monitor said he smelled marijuana in the car and escorted the boys to
the dean's office. There, the students say, each was questioned in separate
rooms.

Zeiher said a school official gave him a choice: either admit to smoking
pot or police officers would take him in handcuffs to the police station.

"I was thinking about what was going to be the easy way," said Zeiher,
whose father is a Manteca police reservist. "I thought, 'How's this going
to look for my dad at the Police Department?' So I admitted to it."

Zeiher, McPherson and one other student confessed in writing; the other
student professed innocence and was excused.

The students who confessed received five-day suspensions and are ineligible
for sports for 45 days, effective this fall. Involuntary transfers will
force Zeiher to spend his senior year at East Union High; McPherson must
attend Manteca High.

It means the death sentence for McPherson's prep sports career, because of
rules requiring disciplinary transfers to wait a year before playing again.

McPherson, a lineman and punter for Sierra last year, has letters of
interest from four Ivy League schools, the University of California at
Davis, Cal Poly and the University of Nevada. He also excelled on the
Sierra golf team.

With a grade-point average hovering around 3.0, McPherson is counting on an
athletic scholarship to get him into a top college.

"If I can't play this fall," McPherson said, "the colleges will look at
that. They will see that on my record and will say, 'Forget about him.'"

Zeiher said he just wants to play one more football season at Sierra and
graduate with his class of 2000.

He and McPherson submitted to blood tests at Doctors Hospital in Manteca on
June 8. Copies of the test provided by the parents show they tested
negative for cannabis.

Greg McPherson said he went ballistic when a disciplinary review board
member suggested during the June 11 hearing that the boys did something to
skew the test results.

Gary Zeiher, father of Adam Zeiher, called the suspensions outrageous
because searches of the car, the boys' backpacks and their lockers found no
traces of marijuana. "They are just saying we smell pot and your eyes are
dilated, and for that your future is down the drain," he said.