The Hoover Cardinals could use the helping hand of Motel 6 maven Tom Bodett, voice of the signature “we’ll leave the light on for you.”

Night football is out at Hoover.

More’s the pity.

The Cardinals became involved in a legal action with neighboring residents and a Superior Court judge unhappily issued an injunction, forcing Hoover to play home games in daytime for the remainder of the season, maybe longer.

Hoover defeated Morse, 22-0, in their Homecoming Friday afternoon and will reschedule kickoffs for Lincoln and San Diego.

The victory improved the Cardinals to 5-1 under second-year coach Jerry Ralph, who was 6-5 last season following head coaching stints at Santana, St. Augustine, and Del Norte.

Now known as Bob Breitbard Field, Hoover’s stadium was originally constructed in the early 1930s and was one of the first fields in the area to have  lights. (Balboa Stadium, home to San Diego High, did not have lights until 1939).

JACKIE ROBINSON STARRED

The Cardinals were hosts for a Southern Section playoff against Pasadena Muir Technical and Jackie Robinson under the lights in 1935.

The crowd of more than 4,000 in Hoover’s original bleachers watched as Robinson threw a touchdown pass in Muir’s 27-0 victory.

Those wooden bleachers burned down in the winter of 1948-49. New, steel-framed seating was in place in time for the 1949 season but installation of lighting was delayed.

Hoover played two “home” games at Aztec Bowl but the remaining contests in a remarkable, 8-1 season were on the road at Coast League sites.

One 1949 game actually took place on  campus. A postseason charity contest with Grossmont that started at 10 a.m. was played to help defray medical costs for an injured Foothillers player.

San Diego was growing and the Hoover field became increasingly important in 1951 when it began a decades-long stretch of doubling as a regional venue for many schools.

FIELD TAKES SHARP TURN

Hoover’s stadium now has  an East-West footprint.  The original stadium ran south to north from the boys’ gymnasium and faced Norwood Street, which began when Meade Avenue ended at 44th Street.

It was in the old alignment that Hoover scored perhaps its greatest victory, a 20-12 triumph over San Diego in 1956 before an overflow crowd of 7,000 persons who filled both sides of the stadium and the end zones.

AND THEN THERE WERE SEVEN

One leg of the second half of the regular season has been completed and seven San Diego Section teams have avoided the big haircut.

Four teams fell from the ranks of the undefeated last week, but Crawford, Francis Parker, Imperial, Mission Hills, Ramona, and San Pasqual are standing tall at 6-0.  San Diego Jewish Academy is 3-0.

Four clubs were 6-0 at this point in 2012.

Carlsbad, El Capitan, and Mission Bay fell with a thud, outscored by a combined 112-35 and becoming part of a group of 11 teams that have one loss.

Oceanside handled Carlsbad, 28-7.  Mount Miguel showed impressive force by running away from El Capitan, 42-21, and Madison, class of Division IV, walloped Mission Bay, 42-6.

Hilltop was upset by Sweetwater, 17-9.

LENDING A HELPING HAND

Isn ‘t this the way it used to be?

Members of Hoover’s freshmen football team got into the spirit of community service after the Cardinals’ Homecoming game against Morse Friday.

Wearing their red  game jerseys,  the Frosh “fanned out”, according to varsity coach Jerry Ralph, pitching in to clean up and pick up in the neighborhood around the East San Diego campus.

Mission Hills, 5-0 and rested from a week off, rose from 19th to 16th in Cal-Hi Sports‘ weekly poll and jumped from ninth to seventh in the South Division I Bowl Rankings.

The improvement is partly because of the victory over Oceanside before last week’s bye and some stumbles by other clubs in the state.  The Grizzlies figure to dine on the Escondido Cougars Friday night as Week 7 gets under way.

Other San Diego Section powers continue to languish in the ubiquitous group of “Teams on the Bubble.” Included are Cathedral (4-1), Helix (3-2), Oceanside (3-2), and Ramona (5-0). Oceanside, with losses only to the No. 4 and No. 16 teams, was dissed and not included.

Carlsbad (5-0), Cathedral, Eastlake (5-1), Helix, and Ramona are South Bowl bubble teams.

WARHAWKS MOVE UP

Madison, the defending State D-3 champion went from ninth to seventh in the D-II South Bowl handicap, with St. Augustine remaining 13th.  Imperial (5-0) is on the bubble. Monte Vista (3-3) gained some regard by getting a bubble mention in D-III.

Francis Parker benefited from Christian’s loss to Mission Bay in Week 6, climbing from fourth to third in D-IV, while Christian dropped from second to fifth.  Santa Fe  Christian, La Jolla Country Day, and The Bishop’s are on the bubble.

Cal-Hi’s division placements are not necessarily the divisions in which San Diego Section teams will participate in  the postseason.

There was no change from 1-10 in the UT-San Diego’s Top 10 as several teams enjoyed a Week 6 bye.

San Diego Section teams begin the turn for home and the postseason with league play beginning this week.

Sometimes it pays to take that busman’s holiday.

No. 2 San Pasqual picked up seven votes despite its bye and No. 5 Cathedral lost 10 votes despite a 42-13 victory over Morse.

Strange.

Other teams also profited from the hiatus. Oceanside’s sabbatical resulted in 12 more votes for the Pirates and El Capitan gained 13.

However, Ramona took the week off and was rewarded with seven less votes and idle Carlsbad emerged with 14 fewer and Helix with 1 less.

Making sense was No. 3 Eastlake, up 7 votes after a 52-14 rout of Sweetwater,  and No. 7 Madison gaining 15 points after a 41-6 victory over Mira Mesa.

The ranks of “others receiving votes” continued to thin, shrinking from nine to seven. Most prominent was heretofore undefeated Christian.  The Patriots were eighty-sixed after a 24-21 loss to Mission Bay.

*Points awarded on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Others receiving votes with points in parenthesis: St. Augustine (5), Grossmont (5), Mission Bay (3), Mount Miguel (3). La Costa Canyon (2), Imperial, Torrey Pines, 1 each.

Thirty-one sportswriters, sportscasters and administrators vote each week, including:  John Maffei, Craig Malveaux, Dennis Lin, Don Norcross, Lisa Lane, and Andrew Burer, UT-San Diego; Steve Brand, Terry Monahan, Bill Dickens, Tom Saxe, Rick Hoff, UT-San Diego correspondents; Nick Pellegrino, East County Sports.com; Steve (Biff) Dolan, Rick (Red) Hill (107.9 FM The Mountain); Jeff Kurtz, playonsports.com; Ernie Martinez, XTRA Sports 1360; John Kentera, Jack Cronin, Ted Mendenhall, Bob Petinak, Jordan Carruth, Bobby Wooldridge, Mark Chiebowski, The Mighty 1090;  Rick Willis, Brandon Stone, Jake Fadden, KUSI-TV; Craig Elsten, 619sports.net; Rick Smith, Partletonsports.com; Jerry Schniepp, John Labeta, CIF San Diego Section, and Bruce Ward, San Diego Unified School District.

Birt Slater Field on the Kearny High campus is going to be dug up and a new field will be in place by 2014.

The Komets will play their remaining three, 2013 home games at Madison, versus Clairemont, Point Loma, and La Jolla.

In tribute to the legendary coach, who was 89 when he passed away Sept. 3, Komets coach Kenny Nears hoped the team could turn out in the final game against Lincoln in Kearny’s vintage, striped uniforms, which had been outlawed by the National Federation of High School associations.

The white stripes on the maroon jerseys had to be modified, as did the maroon stripes on the white jerseys. The stripes had to be of a certain width and length.

The rule, which had been on the books several years, also essentially mandates  that home teams wear dark jerseys and visiting teams white jerseys.

Kearny’s predominant stripes supposedly posed a visual problem for officials calling games, although that has been disputed by members of the San Diego County Officials’ Association.

Lincoln defeated Kearny, 18-16, and the Komets’ request to wear the old uniforms was denied by school officials, citing the existing rule.

PRISON BARS

Several reasons have been given as to why Slater designed the stripes in 1961, his third season as head coach.

A popular story told by Slater is that he became enamored of the uniforms worn in a college game Slater was watching on television.

Slater never would state publicly what he told me probably 40 years ago. “I love those stripes…they remind me of prison bars,”said Slater, who was a tough-minded, challenging coach.  “You look tough in them.  You feel tough.  Of course, you have to play tough.”

“We got a lot of criticism at first,” Slater remembered.  “But we won a lot of games, and we didn’t hear much after that.  I figured if we wore them, we’d have to win with them.”

As Larry Shepard, quarterback of the 1963 San Diego Section championship team, remarked in a stirring testimonial at Slater’s memorial, with one of the old jerseys hanging from the podium: “They gave our team and our community an identity, which we didn’t have.”

SANTA FE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLED

Santa Fe Christian’s opponent was as long on talent as the identity of the man after whom the school was named when it opened in 1959.

Santa Barbara Bishop Diego, in honor of Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno, the first bishop of the diocese of the two Californias in 1840, hammered the Eagles Saturday afternoon, 34-3.

On a hot, windy Santa Ana day, on which temperatures were near the nineties at the coastal campus in Solana Beach, Bishop Diego enhanced its top rating among the state’s small schools in the competitive Division IV.

The Eagles were on the shorter end of a 13-8 score in 2012 at Bishop Diego.

Entering  Week 6 games, Christian and Francis Parker ranked No. 2 and No. 4, and Santa Fe Christian was No. 8 in Cal Hi Sports’ State Bowl South rankings. Christian was edged by Mission Bay, 24-21, and fell out of the undefeated ranks at 5-1.  Francis Parker, 4-0, remained unbeaten after a bye.

But ‘Fe coach Jon Wallace told writer John (‘Fei) Maffei, “We don’t look at ratings, ours or theirs. Our goal is to win the Coastal League and the San Diego Section title….”

The real racing begins next week for many teams throughout the section, with the beginning of league play.

QUICK KICKS

Six of UT-San Diego’s Top 10 were idle last week…No. 3 Eastlake slammed Sweetwater, 52-14; No. 5 Cathedral drubbed Morse, 42-13; No. 7 Madison  whacked Mira Mesa, 41-6, and No. 10 El Capitan beat Granite Hills, 55-14…Army-Navy inaugurated football at its new facility and was on the wrong end of a 49-0 thumping by The Bishop’s…a 49-0 victory at Tri-City Christian was the 100th victory at La Jolla Country Day for coach Jeff Hutzler…he’s 100-33 with the Torreys… 

The weekly UT-San Diego football poll went through a topsy-turvy Week 5, beginning with Oceanside’s loss to Mission Hills,  and flip-flopping all the way down to El Capitan’s high-powered Vaqueros, making their bow in the Top 10.

I differed on a few of the vote’s results.

My essential disagreement with colleagues was over No. 2.  I had Cathedral.  They went for San Pasqual.

San Pasqual opponents have a combined 11-12 record.  Cathedral’s is 13-8.

I weigh heavily San Diego teams’ performances against those out of the area, essentially from Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties.

Cathedral was upset by a strong, local Helix squad but measured Vista Murrieta, the Los Angeles Times‘ No. 4-ranked club coming in to the Broncos’ match with the Dons, who beat the Riverside County power, 35-28.

Cathedral also took on what appeared to be an elite challenge in its season opener when the Dons signed Jordan High, a 2012 state champion from Sandy, Utah.  The Dons won 38-6 and Sandy has struggled since, posting a season record of 3-3.

My associates apparently don’t think much of my applications.  They voted Cathedral low enough that the Dons are fifth this week.

San Pasqual is 5-0 against Torrey Pines, Del Norte, Mt. Carmel,  Poway, and La Costa Canyon.

No knock on the Eagles, who have passed every test, but Cathedral has lined up against far more formidable opponents.

*Points awarded on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Others receiving votes with points in parenthesis: St. Augustine (12), Grossmont (8), Mission Bay (6) Christian (5), Mount Miguel (3). La Costa Canyon (2), Imperial, Hilltop, Torrey Pines, 1 each.

Thirty-one sportswriters, sportscasters and administrators vote each week, including:  John Maffei, Craig Malveaux, Dennis Lin, Don Norcross, Lisa Lane, and Andrew Burer, U-T-San Diego; Steve Brand, Terry Monahan, Bill Dickens, Tom Saxe, Rick Hoff, U-T-San Diego correspondents; Nick Pellegrino, East County Sports.com; Steve (Biff) Dolan, Rick (Red) Hill (107.9 FM The Mountain); Jeff Kurtz, playonsports.com; Ernie Martinez, XTRA Sports 1360; John Kentera, Jack Cronin, Ted Mendenhall, Bob Petinak, Jordan Carruth, Bobby Wooldridge, Mark Chiebowski (The Mighty 1090;  Rick Willis, Brandon tone, Jake Fadden, KUSI-TV; Craig Elsten, 619sports.net; Rick Smith, Partletonsports.com; Jerry Schniepp, John Labeta, CIF San Diego Section, and Bruce Ward, San Diego Unified School District.

Corporate shakeups have nothing on the expected  San Diego Section football poll next week.

Numbers 1, 3, and 7 were beaten and Cathedral rocked Southern Section rankings when it handled visiting No. 4 Vista Murrieta, 35-28.

Mission Hills, which sat second in the UT-San Diego poll behind Oceanside since Week 1, hammered the Pirates 30-6 before more than 5,000 roaring spectators at the San Marcos school.

I have voted the Grizzlies No. 1 since the start of the season, but with less confidence each week as Oceanside began to roll and overcome a haunting loss to Gardena Serra.

Mission Hills coach Chris Hauser, despite a rather manic sideline persona, coaches a tough defense that reflects his energy.

The Grizzlies intercepted four passes and recovered two fumbles.

Maybe most impressive was the Mission Hills kicker, Esteben Senteno.  He offered an NFL-like performance with field goals of 50, 47, and 27 yards, and bombed a 62-yard punt.

DONS AVENGE

I often see a Cathedral assistant coach in the Starbucks near my home in Scripps Ranch.  This week the coach and I visited about the Dons’ upcoming game against Vista Murrieta.

The coach wanted me to believe the Dons were in a very good position to reverse a closer-than-the-score-indicated, 21-10 loss to the Broncos on the road in 2012.

Considering that Vista Murietta had won its first three games by scores of 66-28, 52-13, and 69-21 and was fourth in the L.A. Times’ poll of Southern Section and L.A. City teams, I thought Cathedral was a longshot.

“After last year the returning players were confident we could play with them,” said Dons coach Sean Doyle.

“Rankings are rankings,” Doyle told writer Steve Brand.  “Are they better than Oceanside or Mission Hills?  Who knows, but we knew they were good coming in.”

But for a loss to Helix a week before, the Dons would have been undefeated.

Cathedral contributed to the loss by coming away without a score after virtually renting a suite inside Helix’ 10-yard line in the fourth quarter.

BULLDOGS BARKING

Ramona, which has hung around the bottom rung of the Top 10, lay in the weeds and trapped No. 3 Helix, 10-6  on a cool evening in the mountains.

The Bulldogs of veteran coach Damon Baldwin are off to a 5-0 start.

Ramona fell off to 8-5 last season although it reached the III finals before losing to Lincoln 42-14.

WISH I HAD COME UP WITH THIS STAT

Jim Lindgren of UT-San Diego noted that there are only two in the San Diego Section who have won a  championship as a quarterback and as a coach:  The Bishop’s Joel Allen and Mission Hills’ Chris Hauser.

The 28-year-old Allen quarterbacked Christian to a championship in 2002 and led The Bishop’s to a title in 2010.  Hauser doubled at Vista as a player in 1982 and as coach in 2001.

Lindgren also noted that Bulla Graft, a second baseman on Chula Vista Park View’s 2009 Little League World Series champion, is a star running back at The Bishop’s.  Graft scored 23 touchdowns as a sophomore last season and rushed for 127 yards versus Christian.

QUICK  KICKS
The Classical Academy Caimans of Escondido improved their record to 3-1 with a 28-21 victory over Newport Beach Sage Hill…all of the game’s 49 points were scored in the fourth quarter!…Christian fired the first shot in the Division III run-up to the playoffs by defeating The Bishop’s 56-28…l…it wasn’t an upset but Eastlake, No. 5, threatened the Top 10 rating of St. Augustine, No. 7, with a 23-0 victory….