This wasn’t the expected route of Duane Maley’s farewell tour.

San Diego High was 0-2 for the first time in 46 years.

Maley also was steaming at The San Diego Union sportswriter Jerry Magee and Maley’s boss, principal Lawrence Carr, was steaming at Maley.

Blunt and outspoken, Maley didn’t realize that reporter Magee was going to write exactly what Maley said when discussing the Cavemen’s preseason prospects.

“We’re small, we’re slow, and we’re stupid,” said Maley, words that in future years would have gotten him fired.

Political correctness was not part of the lexicon in 1959.  Maley got a sharp rebuke from his principal and the coach and Magee didn’t speak again until very late in the season.

Magee, who came to The Union in 1956, was an excellent reporter who covered the preps more comprehensively than any writer before or after he left the high school beat.

Magee became the lead reporter of the new San Diego sports franchise, the Chargers, in 1961, and was one of the country’s most respected football writers and columnists for the next 40 years.

POLY NOT ONLY BEACH TEAM TO BEAT CAVERS

Maley had lined up a rugged  schedule for his final season as coach.  He would go into administration in 1960, partly because San Diego was dropping out of the Southern Section and forming its own alliance.

Maley liked playing those tough teams from the North and he got all he asked for after penciling in Long Beach Wilson, Long Beach Poly, and Las Vegas in the first three games.

The Cavers were upset at Wilson, 14-12, and beaten, 13-0, in Balboa Stadium by the Poly team which numbered many of the same players which knocked out San Diego, 26-18, in the quarterfinals of the playoffs in 1958.

After surrendering 456 yards to Poly in ’58, the Hillmen held the Jackrabbits to 262, but Willie Martin ran 64 yards for one touchdown and returned a kickoff 88 for another.

Led by tackle Mike  Giers, Long Beach defenders made 15 tackles for losses of 94 yards and Giers sacked San Diego quarterback Steve Simon seven times for 57 yards.

Richard (Prime) McClendon led the Cavers with 91 yards in 9 carries.

A 26-13 victory in Nevada got the Cavers rolling.  They routed Lincoln 32-0 with 369 rushing yards and seemed on the verge. But St. Augustine, shut out, 51-0, in 1958, pulled off a 12-12 tie.

San Diego’s starting quarterback, the improving Simon, was ejected after inadvertently kicking St. Augustine’s Paul Nacozy in the head.

Simon had tried to hurdle the Saints player during an attempted tackle by Nacozy on an out-of-bounds play in the first half.

Maley raged on the San Diego sideline at Simon’s disqualification and for almost an hour after the game.

STRETCH  RUN

The Cavers’ 2-2-1 record represented their poorest after five games since a 2-3 start in 1938, but they closed out Maley’s career with a remarkable run of six consecutive victories in which they averaged 45 points a game and gave up only 46.

There would be no opportunity to meet Poly in the playoffs.

As a presumed accommodation to the departing San Diego schools, some of  which had complained of long seasons,  CIF Southern Section commissioner Ken  Fagans announced that there would be two groups of AAA playoff teams.

A three-week, eight-team bracket would be in use only one year.  The playoffs would return  to a four-week, 16-team bracket in 1960, said Fagans.

Poly was aligned in the Northern Division and San Diego in the Southern.

San Diego dispatched a good Chula Vista team, 34-14, in the first round after being seeded fourth, behind Monrovia, Santa Ana, and Redlands.  The seedings had been made weeks earlier, as San Diego was just reaching its stride.

Santa Ana, the semifinals opponent, would be the measure by which the Hillers would determine how far they’d come in the second half of the season.

The Saints were 10-0 and averaging 35 points a game.

With H.D. Murphy, Richard (Prime) McClendon, and Richard Hutchison running in the manner of some outstanding predecessors, the Hillers overcame 12 penalties for 90 yards and rushed for 335 yards in a 26-6 victory.

Murphy gained 119 yards in  14 attempts, McClendon 106 in 11, and Hutchison, in his first start,  58 in 12.

Santa Ana scored with 20 seconds remaining  after many in the Santa Ana Bowl capacity crowd of 9,000 had departed.

SCOUTING? AND FOR WHOM?

Monrovia, coached by Mike Giddings, would be the Cavers’ opponent in the finals at Balboa Stadium.

The 26-year-old Giddings was the nephew of Don Giddings, the former Point Loma High coach who had become the school’s vice principal, and Ed Giddings, a San Diego attorney. Ed and Don played at San Diego High in the 1920s and ‘thirties.

The Giddingses and Pointers coach Bennie Edens were in Santa Ana for the Cavers’ game.

Maley’s camp suspected that the Point Loma group was scouting San Diego for Monrovia.  “Oh, no,” Edens said with a straight face when questioned by Paul Cour of the Evening Tribune.  “We just wanted to see the ball game.”

UNDEFEATED COACH

Giddings had a coaching record of 29-0, including 11-0 in his first season as the Wildcats’ varsity mentor.  He also had been undefeated in two seasons of guiding the B squad.

“We feel this:  San Diego comes the closest to being the same type team we are,” Giddings told Jerry Magee.  “We combine a quick line and fast backs and so does San Diego.”

“And we see no reason to stop now,” Giddings said, discussing his undefeated record.

John Kovac, after scouting the Wildcats with San Diego football aide Jerry Dahms and ex-Coronado star Stew Worden the previous week (Monrovia’s 14-6 win over Redlands before 15,000 at Mt. San Antonio Junior College), made an  interesting remark.

“I know (Monrovia) is very perturbed because they’re not going to be playing Long Beach Poly,” Kovac told Magee.  The Wildcats apparently were unhappy that they were playing the allegedly lesser San Diego squad.

The Jackrabbits were in the Northern Division finals against Hawthorne.

LET THE CARNAGE BEGIN

Jerry Magee’s lead succinctly described Duane Maley’s last game:

“San Diego High’s precisionists last night offered a stunning testimonial to Duane Maley’s coaching career by overwhelming unbeaten Monrovia, 53-0, in Balboa Stadium.”

San Diego players and supporters in the crowd of 11,000 carried Maley to midfield for the postgame handshake.

Giddings afterward remarked to Paul Cour, “I’ll be back in this town someday.”

Murphy scored three touchdowns on 81- and two-yard runs, and on a 79-yard kickoff return, and ran seven times for 127 of San Diego’s 369 rushing yards.

Simon scored three touchdowns (4, 15, and 64-yard runs) and had 119 yards  in 7 attempts and passed for one touchdown and had another called back by penalty.

Hutchison had 60 yards  in 12 carries, and McClendon 30 in six, not including a 15-yard point-after-touchdown run.

Had San Diego reached a point where it might have beaten Long Beach Poly in a return match, which would have been possible under the old playoff format?

The Cavers could only wonder.

QUICK KICKS

Maley’s 12-season career record was 97-19-3 (.828)…Murphy averaged 9.6 yards a carry and scored 21 touchdowns…McClendon averaged 9.3…Simon, who didn’t play enough to letter behind Ezell Singleton in 1958, overcame early-season jitters and passed for 15 touchdowns…San Diego’s defense was led by Oliver McKinney, Phil Cooper, Willie Bolton, Charlie Dykstra, and Tom Meshack…Larry Wohlford was a standout center…Hutchison got his chance to start in the playoffs after Emile Wright ran afoul of the law and was suspended…Charlie Popa was named to replace Maley as head coach the week after the Monrovia playoff…Maley moved on to vice principal and principal positions in the City Schools…Maley’s son, Dennis, was an all-Eastern League running back and a tough defender in  1964 and later played at the University of Arizona before signing a professional baseball contract…Giddings never was “back in this town someday” with a football team…he moved on to became head coach at Glendale Junior College and defeated San Diego J.C., which numbered several ex-Cavers, 7-6, in the opening game of  the 1960 season….

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.