Birt Slater’s sanity was in question.

Why would the handsome, charismatic Slater take the head coaching job at Kearny (three winning years in 15 seasons,  all-time record,  45-66-7), when he could have had the San Diego High  job when Duane Maley retired?

The answer wasn’t nearly as simple, but Slater eventually created his own powerhouse at this different and seemingly much less attractive venue.

Go back to 1953.

Slater that year replaced Bill Burrows as Maley’s chief assistant after one year at Southwest Junior High near the Mexico border and two years removed as a starting end on San Diego State’s 1951, 10-0-1  Pineapple Bowl squad.

Maley and Slater became a formidable tandem.

Birt coached defense and Maley coached offense.  The Cavers were 7-3 in ’53, 9-2 in ’54, 11-0-1 in ’55,  7-2 in ’56, and 11-1 in ’57.

The 45-8-1 record included a 26-1 run against City Prep League competition, 30-1 versus San Diego County teams, and 15-7-1 against schools outside the County.

DOMINO EFFECT

Mary McMullen, the founding principal when Lincoln opened as a junior high in 1949, was leaving at the end of the 1956-57 school year to open Will Crawford High, named for the former San Diego City Schools  superintendent.

Mary Mac, as she was known to the faculty at Lincoln, wanted Walt Harvey to follow her to Crawford.

Harvey had just completed a three-year, start-up program as Lincoln went from junior to senior high and his 1956 team posted a 5-2-1 record with lots of players returning for ’57.

Saying no to McMullen was not easy.  She was a respected administrator and she was persuasive.

Another start-up and a few seasons of taking lumps wasn’t particularly appetizing, but Harvey said yes.  He got a pay raise and the new school was closer to Harvey’s home in the college area.  His two sons would be attending Crawford.

Harvey and basketball coach Don Smith, at McMullen’s behest, approached Slater at a San Diego High basketball game the winter of 1956-57 and offered the Lincoln job. Slater did not commit.  Smith and Harvey sensed that Slater was turning them down.

Other factors were in motion.

Duane Maley urged Slater to stick around for another year.  Maley was going to retire and go into administration.

Then a turnabout.

Slater accepted the Lincoln offer.

An announcement  from the City Schools’ superintendent’s office in early March, 1957, revealed that the position at Lincoln was going to be filled by Slater, who was quoted as saying he would begin assembling a staff and take over the program in the fall.

Then another turnabout.

Slater, apparently satisfied that Maley would retire after one more season and that Slater would be Maley’s successor, backed out at Lincoln and remained at San Diego High.

MORE DOMINOES

Shan Deniston then moved from La Jolla and took over at Lincoln  and Harry West replaced Deniston at La Jolla.

“We had a good year in ‘fifty-seven,” said Slater.  “Ezell Singleton had developed as a quarterback and things looked good for ‘fifty-eight.  Duane told me, “’I can’t give it up now; we’ve got too good a team coming back.’”

Slater did not coach football in 1958 but remained as track coach through the 1959 season. He had been a championship half-miler at Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1940s.

(Slater’s track squads posted a 38-6-1 record in dual meets from 1955-59. His band of four, including Roscoe Cook, Bobby Staten, Willie Jordan, and Charles (Sugar Jet) Davis, scored 20 points and won the Southern California team championship in 1957).

MALEY STAYS ON

Charlie Popa took Slater’s place on the football staff in 1958.  Maley again eschewed  retirement and returned for 1959, which would be his final season.

Popa became the heir apparent.  Slater had decided to move on.

Slater was hired at Kearny in 1959 and won the Western League championship in his first season.  He had a team of no names but it scrapped every week against bigger, more talented foes. His arrival on the campus hard by U.S. 395 on Linda Vista Road began a 18-season run of success.

Slater had one losing year and his teams posted an overall record of 134-41-9 (.753) with 15 playoff appearances, 5 trips to the San Diego Section finals, and 3 championships.

After being at San Diego during some of its greatest years, Slater built a program at Kearny that rivaled the Cavers’.

SHEPARD REMEMBERS

The 1963 team which starred Jim (Yazoo) Smith, Steve Reina, Larry Shepard, Charlie Buchanan, John Erquiaga, Steve Jones, Robert Odom, Dennis Santiago, Bill Carroll, Charles Wilker, Dan Fulkerson, Ernie Oyama, John Levi, and a few more, was 11-1 and often described as equal to almost any San Diego High team of the postwar era.

“I always thought of Birt as a father figure,” said Shepard, who recalled a key moment in his life after Shepard had returned home from his freshman year at UCLA.

“I was playing over the line at South Mission Beach and Birt happened by on the boardwalk.”

“What are you doing?”  the fiery Slater wondered.  “I’m playing over the line,” the equally fiery Shepard responded.

“No, what are doing with your life?” demanded Slater.  “I’m thinking about going back to school,” said Shepard.  “Come to the high school Monday morning,” said Slater.

Slater met his ex-player at Kearny and drove Shepard to the City Schools’ office that Monday and announced  he was hiring the former quarterback for the position of “campus security.”

After a few ohs, ahs, and we-can’t-do-this, Shepard was hired.  He went to work at Kearny and coached JV football with Brad Griffith and Don Wadsworth.

Eventually Slater helped Larry get an assistant’s job under Joe DiTomaso at St. Augustine. When DiTomaso moved to Santana, Shepard  became head coach of the Saints and graduated and earned his teaching credential at San Diego State.  He later was head coach at Monte Vista and retired after a long career in the Grossmont School District.

BIRT QUITS EARLY, JOINS CHARGERS

Slater retired at the relatively young age of 52 after the 1976 campaign, but was not long out of football.

Chargers coach Tommy Prothro hired Slater as an assistant to his coaching staff in 1977. Slater broke down and evaluated film of opponents.

Don Coryell was appointed head coach in 1978 and retained Slater on the coaching staff.

Birt retired from the Chargers after the 1983 season.

Ed Imo is going into the Kearny Hall of Fame on Saturday, April 13, in a tribute most fitting for the anchor of perhaps the finest team in school history.

After a 6-6 tie with Sweetwater in the opening game, Kearny rolled to 12 consecutive victories and the San Diego Section championship.

Don Norcross was the quarterback of that team, but for Norcross all props are for Imo, the squat, fireplug nose tackle who took on double team blocking every week and emerged as the San Diego Section player of the year.

“He was simply dominating,” said Norcross, who is known today as a reporter and columnist (“This Just In”) for UT-San Diego.  “I’m guessing he was listed as 5-9, 230 pounds.  He was raw…brutally strong.

“No center could block him one on one,” said Norcross.  “His combination of quickness and strength made him unblockable.  Look at how few points our team allowed that year.  He was the anchor.”

The 12-0-1 Komets outscored their opponents, 345-79, and shut out six teams.

“All I can say is that I’m thankful he was on my team,” Norcross said.  “Had I played against him I would have spent a lot of time face first into the grass.”

Imo recently was named to the first-team, all-time San Diego County prep squad.

Imo also was community college defensive player of the year at San Diego City College, from which he went on to star at  San Diego State.

Imo, who is the physical education/athletics department chairman at American Samoa Community College,  is in Ghangu, China, where he is helping a Samoan team train for the World University Games.

Ed will be represented at the Hall of Fame induction by his son, Ben Imo.

Imo trivia stat:  When Ed played at San Diego State in the  late ‘seventies he had the shortest name of any NCAA Division I player, five letters.

“Fitting,” Norcross added, “because of his stature.”

Kearny also is honoring six  others this year:

–Grady Fuson, Oakland A’s scouting executive who played with Norcross and Imo.

–The late basketball coach and U.S. government teacher Tim  Short.

–The 1998-00, girls’ basketball teams, which won 3 championships.

–The late Leonard Fierro, Sr., history and U.S. government teacher and early proponent of English as Second Language.

–Al Janc, economist.

–Randy Rogel, actor, director, writer, musician.

One of St. Augustine’s vagabond teams finally was getting a home.

A 330-yard track and field oval would provide the Saints a facility for dual-meet, track-and-field competition beginning in 1960.

Football and baseball would still have to travel to  games. Basketball teams had a home since a gymnasium/auditorium was constructed in time for the 1951-52 school year.

That the running surface of the track was short of the standard, 440-yard oval was  result of property lines and geography. The expanse surrounded by Palm Street on the North, Nutmeg on the South,  32nd Street on the West and 33rd on the East was not large enough for a regulation track.

The football team, which was about to enjoy the first undefeated season in the school’s 37-year history, was forced to move practice to the intramural, lower field.

The track’s circumference created some oddities and posed a challenge to those responsible for staggering lanes and chalking for various events.

The most obvious adjustment was required for hurdlers.  They would start the 120-yard high barriers on a curve and would be required to cover more than half the oval in the 180-yard lows.

Years later the Saints were able to close Bancroft Avenue from Nutmeg to Palm and widen the field into a soccer venue.

The Saints hit the road again for their track meets.

Ray Baksh, 80, who coached football at Helix, La Jolla, and St. Augustine and lived  with an entrepreneurial spirit, passed away in San Diego.

Baksh was a graduate of Imperial High and is in the Imperial High football Hall of Fame.  A Marine Corps veteran and San Diego State graduate, Ray and his wife Virginia, owned fast food franchises.  Eventually he   was able to pursue a lifelong passion  and  helped coach high school football teams in the area.

“Ray was a no nonsense coach who coached our linebackers for ten years,” said retired Helix coach Jim Arnaiz.

“His no-nonsense approach was backed up by his love for football and his ability to challenge every player in his group.”

Arnaiz remembered something Ray would tell his players.  “He would finish his daily and game meetings with his group by saying, ‘I love you guys.  Leave it on the field.”

A West Hills athlete dominated Saturday in the Arcadia Invitational, but it wasn’t state-leading discus thrower Brenden Song.

Sophomore Melissa Mongiovi, running in the afternoon seeded session, blew out a :55.28, for the overall first-place finish in the Girls’ 400-meter run.  The best the invitational runners could do in  the evening was :56.18.

Song, who increased his state best to 191-5 on Friday in a dual meet with Helix, was fourth in the discus in the evening invitational session with a best of 181-7.

Song trailed Damon Unland of Washington’s Spokane Ferris (190-3), Marty Taylor of Newport Beach Newport Harbor (186-4), and Dylan Fischer of Phoenix Desert Vista (182-7).

Mongiovi now ranks 10th in the country this year and San Diego Section No. 9 all-time.  She ran in the 2012 state meet and had a best of :55.72 as a freshman.

Carlsbad’s Christian Freeman was ninth in the 3,200 run but his 8:52.65 is eighth all time in San Diego, just below the 8:51.94 by San Diego’s Meb Keflezighi in 1994 and the 8:52.44 by Chula Vista’s Tim Danielson in 1966.

Alex Grigoriev of Rancho Bernardo ran 1:52.71 in the Boys’ 800 and was fifth.

Otay Ranch’s Alexander Law, who went 15-6 in the pole vault on Friday in a dual meet against Bonita Vista improved his season best to 15-9 and won the afternoon competition. Law’s teammate Carina Gillespie was fifth in the invitational 800 in 2:13.

La Costa Canyon’s Emma Abrahamson was 10th in the 3,200 at 10:36.01.

Granite Hills Jake Johnson ran :14.60 in the 110-meter high hurdles and Scripps Ranch’s Brian Thomas circled the 400-meter oval in :49.22.

A few San Diego athletes stood out in the Friday  portion of the Arcadia Invitational.

Doton Ogundeji of Madison led a group of discus throwers at 169 feet, 8 inches, third best in the County.

Four Mt. Carmel runners averaged 1:57.63 in each of their 800-meter legs as part of the 4×800 seeded races.  Mt. Carmel’s time of 7:51.052 was good for ninth overall, while four Del Norte runners averaged 1:59.5 and were 12th overall in 7:58.17.

Meanwhile in San Diego Section dual meets Friday,  state leader Brenden Song of West Hills wafted the discus 191-5, his all-time best, in a dual meet with Helix.  El Camino’s Jamal Newman moved into second place in the County with a throw of 177-7  against Vista. Xander Law of Otay Ranch cleared 15-6 in the pole vault against Bonita Vista to take the County lead.

Newman and Law now are sixth in the state in their respective events.