–Writer John Maffei, at Mission Hills’ 42-17 victory over San Pasqual: “The fog was so thick that the Grizzlies and San Pasqual looked as if they were playing in clam chowder.”
–Dennis Lin, at Lincoln’s 20-7 win over undefeated Olympian: “Looking like some shrouded figure stepping out of an action movie, Tyree Robinson emerged from the fog hovering over Devore (sic) Stadium….”
— Jim Lindgren, quoting St. Augustine coach Richard Sanchez describing freshman running back Elijah Preston, at the Saints’ 38-20 advance against Valley Center: “Throw in a blanket of fog and you really can’t see him until he’s gone.”
–Craig Malveaux, on Francis Parker’s Gabe Harrington, who passed for four touchdowns in a 27-24, double-overtime victory over visiting Christian: “…battled Christian defenders and a billow of fog….”
Fog was so intrusive in the San Diego Section semifinals playoffs this week that writers at four games were moved to include descriptions of the low-lying mixture of suspended water droplets or ice crystals in their game coverages.
Fog and football in San Diego go together like passes and catches.
Hundreds of games have been affected, going back to when the first night games were played in the 1930s.
Elsewhere on this website are examples, a few cited below.
–Helix’s record-setting passing attack (quarterback Jim Plum, receivers Karl Dorrell, Allan Durden, and Craig Galloway) was crippled in 1981 in a championship game loss to Vista.
Fog was so bad that The San Diego Union writer Steve Brand and other members of the media descended from the press level at San Diego Stadium and went to the field. Visibility was just as limited, or poorer.
NOT A CELL PHONE, BUT…
–A 1939 Long Beach Wilson-Hoover game drew a crowd of about 4,000 to the Cardinals’ field, but those in attendance had only an idea of the playing area.
Ex-basketball coach Bruce Maxwell, and former Hoover athlete Bob Beckus got together and brought a play-by-play to the fans.
Beckus, armed with a portable telephone, roamed the sideline and Maxwell announced Beckus’ reports over the stadium public address.
The only complaint came from a Long Beach Poly scout who drove 200 miles roundtrip and had nothing to show for his effort to chart the Wilson Bruins, who tied Hoover 6-6.
Union reporter Charlie Byrne’s game account began “By Bruce Maxwell and Bob Beckus, as told to Charles Byrne.”
–Los Angeles Loyola’s Al Pollard ran virtually untouched and unseen for two 70-yard touchdowns in the Cubs’ 19-6 playoff victory in Balboa Stadium in 1946.
WHO? WHERE?
San Dieguito coach Curtis French complained that fog “was so thick we lost track of the ball and didn’t know who to tackle” on a kickoff return that went for a 103-yard touchdown in a 20-13 loss to Escondido in 1949.
Evening Tribune reporter Jerry Brucker advised the need for radar after he caught only glimpses of a 1949 Hoover-Pasadena game in Aztec Bowl.
FOGOUT
Fog blanketed Orange County as San Diego and Fullerton prepared for a first-round playoff in 1950.
San Diego center Fred Thompson recalled that he could not see to whom he was snapping the ball in the pregame warmup.
But Thompson, his teammates, and Cavers coach Duane Maley were stunned when officials postponed the game, after the national anthem.
The Cavers lost the next day, 20-19.
MOST FAVORITES GET THROUGH
There were 10 semifinals games in five divisions, with arguable favorites posting a 7-2-1 record.
Mission Hills and Eastlake (Division I), Oceanside (II), Ramona (III), Madison and St. Augustine (IV), and Santa Fe Christian (V) were favored semifinalists who will play a fourth and final postseason game for championships.
Poway scored a mild upset of Helix in D-II and Lincoln a moderate upset over Olympian in D-III. Francis Parker and Christian were rated a tossup in D-V and Parker won 27-24 in double overtime.
Not exactly modern hard rap, but school administrators weren’t amused when they heard students in the San Diego High cheering section “dissing” their Hoover counterparts.
The Hilltoppers sung to the tune of an old Army field artillery ditty, “Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail…as those caissons go rolling along”.
With apologies to Tom Ables, San Diego High, Class of ’44.
“Give a jeer, give a jeer, for the boys who drink the beer, in the cellars of old Hoover High.
“They are drunk, they are bold,
and they always have a cold, in the cellars of old Hoover High.
“So drink, drink, drink, the beer is in the sink, the scum is floating to the top.
“Scrape off that scum, And drink, you dirty bum, in the cellars of old Hoover High.”
1944: The “Temporary Suburbs”
Oct. 5 was bearing down on Kearny High football coach Darrell Smith. His team would play the first football game in school history, a night game no less, at Coronado High against the Islanders’ junior varsity.
Problem.
An important component of the Komets’ uniform was missing, caused by a delay in shipment by the manufacturer.
Coronado coach Hal Niedermeyer stepped up and loaned Kearny enough football pants so the Komets could get through the game.
Kearny’s sewing class of future seamstresses also came to the aid of Smith, patching holes and tears (these weren’t Coronado’s varsity whites).
The Komets’ maroon jerseys were a good-enough match for the Islanders’ toggery, but there was little else to compare. The Islanders’ JV won, 19-7.
The lack of football clothing was a microcosm of the community of Linda Vista, where the school opened as a junior high, grades 7, 8, and 9, in 1941, and which was bursting at the seams.
Although housing lots had been marketed on the Kearny Mesa since the 1920s, Linda Vista was relatively untouched, sitting about two miles north of the city’s urban base and separated by the wide and expansive Mission Valley.
With a little help from friends, the Kearny Komets fielded their first team. Linda Vista Road, also known as U.S. 395, formed backdrop for photo of varsity eleven.
BOOM TOWN SAN DIEGO
The looming World War II changed everything.
Almost overnight San Diego was transformed, from a “sleepy border town to a teeming wartime metropolis”, according to The Journal of San Diego History.
Linda Vista would be known as the “Temporary Suburbs”, where eventually as many as 16,000 persons occupied almost 5,000 Federal housing units, most of which would be taken down in the years following the war.
San Diego’s Gabriel Nava was supposed to be paying attention in Science class, but Nava seemed more interested in the Cavers’ offense and the role he would play.
San Diego’s population increased almost 70 per cent from 1939-45, from barely 200,000 to more than 350,000. Aircraft workers and their families began pouring into the area at the rate of about 1,500 a week in late 1940.
Families reportedly slept in cars, garages, barracks or tents. Even in all-night movie theaters and abandoned streetcars in Mission Valley, according to The Journal of San Diego History.
The federal government, acting to find shelter for defense workers and military personnel, quickly began to throw up single-family homes and duplexes.
THREE-THOUSAND HOUSES IN 200 DAYS
Defense Housing Project #4092, AKA Linda Vista, was typical of federal projects designed to alleviate the housing problem. In just under 7 months 3,000 units went up.
City resources were stretched. And stretched.
The Linda Vista instant community lacked adequate access roads, retail shopping, fire and police protection, rubbish collection, and other essentials.
There was one Safeway. Checkout at any of the six lines sometimes took up to two hours.
KEARNY NOW GRADES 7-12
Kearny Junior High became a junior-senior high. The new school had progressively added a grade each year, with the first senior class beginning in September of this year.
The 1945 graduating seniors numbered 140, not counting another estimated 120 who left school for the military. Kearny numbered 536 students in six grades. Sixty turned out for the 1944 football team.
The Komets played a schedule against largely junior varsities. Behind quarterback Dick Rose, they posted a 2-5 record, the only varsity opponent being Brown Military, which shut them out, 27-0.
WHO WAS KEARNY?
Kearny High, Kearny Mesa, and various Kearny streets, towns, military installations, and land masses from the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, was named after Stephen Watts Kearny (pronounced Kar-nee and often misspelled “Kearney”), a decorated, 19th century army general known as the “father of the cavalry.”
Kearny fought in the War of 1812 and almost 35 years later was in a losing battle against the San Pasqual Indians, south of Escondido in 1846.
Kearny’s troops were outnumbered and their weapons would not fire because of wet gun powder in what became known as the “Battle of San Pasqual.”
Stephen W. was a decorated soldier.
Slightly injured in the skirmish, Kearny and his group of 18 men retreated to an area known today as “Battle Mountain” on the northern edge of the Rancho Bernardo community.
As reported in some journals, Kearny and his troops would follow scout Kit Carson and make their way South to the area that now bears Kearny’s name.
The San Pasqual battle site still is visible. The fight took place on a rocky knoll east of Interstate 15, next to Lake Hodges.
HILLERS’ REIGN BEGINS
San Diego High was entering an unparalleled period of success. A 7-1 record would be followed by 16 consecutive winning seasons. From 1944-59 the Cavers were 127-24-4, an .832 winning percentage
And playoffs were back, sort of.
The California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section decreed championships in four districts.
No postseason play took place in 1943. Playoffs in 1942 and ’44 were given special sanction by the CIF executive committee but were not major playoffs.
Escondido’s Bob (Chick) Embrey led Escondido to 7-1 record and later coached Cougars to 144 victories from 1956-76.
Billed as the County championship, the 6-1 Cavers met the 7-0 Escondido Cougars, led by quarterback Bob Embrey, who, better known as Chick Embrey, would forge a legendary coaching career at the school.
San Diego took a 13-0 halftime lead and cruised to a 20-0 victory before about 3,000 persons at Escondido High. The Cavers outgained the Cougars, 312-146, and had 23 first downs to 8.
The Hillers thus shared CIF Lower Division laurels with Alhambra Mark Keppel, which defeated Pasadena Junior College’s lower division (comprised of junior year and senior year high school students from John Muir High), 19-13; Bonita, which topped Calexico, 12-6, and Santa Ana, which defeated Norwalk Excelsior, 15-13.
Redondo Beach Redondo, which signed Hoover for a final regular-season game and warmed up for the playoffs by routing the Cardinals 54-0, knocked off Santa Monica, 31-7, in the upper division title game, then was declared co-champion with Mark Keppel.
Redondo finished the season with a 20-game winning streak dating to 1942 and Keppel’s season ended with an 8-0 record.
HONORS
Tackle Tom Dahms, the fourth of five brothers who played football at San Diego High over a span of two decades, was all-Southern California first team. Embrey made the second team.
St. Augustine center Jim Orsborn earned honors on the all-Southern California Catholic schools team.
Dahms played at San Diego State and in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Cardinals, and then coached 20 years in the American Football League and NFL.
San Diego men’s cheerleaders (from left) Tom Crawford, Dale Sutliff, Bill Hall.
POINT-A-MINUTE HILLERS
San Diego’s 49-0 victory over Coronado represented its highest point total since a 69-0, season-opening win over Sweetwater in 1925, a span of 156 games.
The Hillers bettered that total five games later in an infamous, 72-0 rout of Hoover. Although at Balboa Stadium, that contest was Hoover’s home game.
Heavy rains during the week promised a “slow” track and game manager Lawrence Carr, the Hoover vice principal, considered a postponement and playing the game on Saturday afternoon at Hoover.
STADIUM SITE OF CARNAGE
As Bob Lantz wrote in The San Diego Union: “Reveling in its ability to score at will, the San Diego High powerhouse gave future Hillers and Cardinals teams a mark at which to shoot by burying Hoover under a 72-0 avalanche in the 12th annual meeting of the crosstown rivals before 18,000 fans last night in Balboa Stadium.”
The Cavers never punted and Hoover never crossed the 50-yard line. San Diego returned five intercepted passes for touchdowns. The Cardinals fumbled on their first play from scrimmage, setting up the Hillers’ first score.
The ultimate indignity came when Hoover backs more than once ran into each other on attempted single or double reverses.
Hillers coach Bill Bailey told Bill Cordtz of The San Diego Daily Journal that his team had 40 players dressed and every one got into the game.
San Diego’s Tom Powell set a “modern” school record with 25 points on four touchdowns and a conversion, which propelled Powell to the league scoring championship. San Dieguito’s Ralph Swain was the County leader with 100.
CAMP LOCKETT ROCKS
Freddie Espy (right), with Fred Crestman (left) and Art Filson, was one of two Hoover returning lettermen.
Brown Military traveled from Pacific Beach to Campo, more than 60 miles east, to play a team representing the Camp Lockett horse soldiers, who patrolled the Mexican border a mile away.
The Rocketts, whose roster included ex-college players, won 33-0, before a crowd of about 1,000 convalescing soldiers and Italian prisoners of war.
CAVERS’ HOMECOMINGS AGREE WITH POLY
Two of Southern California’s oldest antagonists, San Diego and Long Beach Poly, met for the 31st time and the first time since 1941 on the Cavers’ 12th annual Homecoming weekend.
Poly also was the visiting team when Homecoming was inaugurated in 1933 and the Jackrabbits furnished the opposition in 1939.
Poly extended its lead in the series to 21-9-1 with a 20-6 victory before 13,000 Friday night fans.
EAST IS EAST, WEST IS BEST
Point Loma, La Jolla, San Diego, and Coronado combined to give the East a 13-6 victory over the West, comprised of Hoover, Grossmont, and Sweetwater before about 18,000 persons in the sixth annual preseason carnival.
“This play should go,” says Point Loma coach Bruce Maxwell, outlining carnival maneuver for tackle Emmet Herz.
Hoover played the first and fourth quarters for the West. The Cardinals’ Freddy Espy ran 94 yards against Point Loma for the West’s only score.
Ed Teagle of La Jolla ran two yards and Tom Powell’s pass to Harry West for 30 yards against Hoover provided East touchdowns.
Instead of the usual 12-minute quarters, teams played for 15 minutes and were allowed a timeout.
FROM VIKINGS TO BOMBERS
La Jolla coach Larry Hanson lived a dual life.
He coached the Vikings and the San Diego Bombers.
Led by running backs Ed Teagle and George Pinnell, A.K.A. “The Vanishing Viking”, La Jolla posted a 4-2-1 record and overcame the loss of two returning lettermen starters who had 1-A draft status and left the team before the season.
Hanson was more successful in his weekend job as the moonlighting coach of the San Diego Bombers, which won the Pacific Coast Professional Football League championship with a 9-0 record.
The Bombers played a two-game, home-and-home, postseason series against the American Football League champion Hollywood Rangers and lost, 42-7 and 21-0.
Hanson’s workload apparently was not considered extraordinary, in comparison to that period in most Americans’ lives.
A story about the Vikings’ preseason opener against St. Augustine and casually featuring Hanson was on the front page of the Tribune-Sun sports section. Three columns to the right was a photograph of Hanson, also featured in an advance on the Bombers’ game with the March Field Fourth Air Force Flyers.
Teagle was among the County’s leading scorers for Vikings.
SIGNS OF THE TIME
A 25,000-year-old tooth was found in the backyard of a home at 1844 Palm Avenue in National City.
The homeowner discovered the 2 ¼-inch-wide chopper as he excavated a cesspool. Scientists said the tooth was from a tapir, a large mammal shaped similar to a pig and still extant in other parts of the world.
TRUE GRID
Including freelance members, such as Phoenix Union, Yuma, and Tucson in Arizona and a few junior highs, the Southern Section counted 139 schools…Escondido star Chick Embrey also was sports editor of the school newspaper…La Jolla halfback Ray Hoobler sustained a broken leg in a preseason scrimmage and was lost for the season…Hoobler was better known later in life as the San Diego Chief of Police from 1971-75…San Diego County teams began scheduling after-dark games as restrictions on night contests were being lifted…the lights went out for 18 minutes before the Lane Field kickoff between St. Augustine and San Bernardino St. Bernardine…the Saints won 21-0 after the lights came on…Fr. McDermott, the St. Augustine coach, attended a meeting in Los Angeles at which the Saints agreed to become members of the Southland Catholic League, which would begin play in 1945…an expansive loop, the Southland also promised to invite St. Mary’s High of Phoenix once wartime travel restrictions were lifted…the Arizona team did not join…former Southern League schools competed in the CIF-designated Group 12 League…there were 15 “group” leagues, created to put schools within short distances of each other…six Point Loma seniors played as sophomores for Cavers coach Bill Bailey’s last Point Loma team in 1942…local knowledge did not help the Pointers, San Diego winning, 45-0…Escondido businesses announced that they would be closed on Armistice Day, Nov. 11…the unbeaten, 6-0 Cougars were playing at 5-0-1 Oceanside for the Group 12 championship…San Diego’s Tom Powell, Joe Adamo, and Marcus Miranda visited Hoover’s Al Grandstrom in the hospital after Grandstrom sustained a severe knee injury in the rivalry game…St. Augustine dropped a 6-0 decision to the Coronado varsity in the final game of the season after losing to the Coronado JV, 7-6, in Week 2….
2012 Week 12: Dreaded Administrative Glitch Crushes Cathedral Season
Cathedral’s honored program took a body blow this week when the Dons were forced to forfeit eight victories in an 8-2 season and were knocked out the postseason.
The Dons self-reported an ineligible player, who appeared in all 10 Cathedral games. San Diego Section rules state that a team with three forfeits cannot participate in the playoffs.
The violation seems minor, at worst.
According to sources, the player attended Cathedral as a freshman, transferred to another school for his sophomore year, and came back to Cathedral this year.
Routine paper work that would have allowed the player to be on the Cathedral squad this season apparently was not completed, misplaced, or overlooked.
Cathedral’s staggering loss was good news to Serra, which lost to the Dons, 55-7, in the final regular-season game and was to play Cathedral in the quarterfinals this week, the Dons having received a first-round bye.
Serra now will play at Ramona, which eliminated West Hills 41-21.
Cathedral was the San Diego Section’s preeminent Division III team. The Dons topped No. 2-ranked Helix 16-9 and battled state-ranked No. 1 Vista Murrieta before surrendering a fourth-quarter touchdown and losing 21-10.
IT’S HAPPENED MANY TIMES
Cathedral’s misfortune is not new in any sport on the high school landscape.
Most recently Madison was forced to forfeit the D-IV title in 2010 because of a residential transfer beef. The Warhawks, with help from the City Schools, litigated and had the judgment overturned.
Chula Vista forfeited 4 victories and went from 9-0 to 5-4 in 1976 and was out of the playoffs.
The 1958-59 San Diego High basketball team, 16-2 and poised for a deep run in the Southern California playoffs, forfeited all 16 victories. Starting forward Otha Phillips was beyond the age limit to be athletically eligible.
The Cavers, behind the great Arthur (Hambone) Williams finished the season 24-2 competitively but 8-18 legislatively.
PLAYOFFS RESULTS AS EXPECTED
Seeded teams successfully moved through the rounds. Semifinals will match the top 4 in divisions I, II, IV, and V. Serra is No. 7 in III.
Quarterfinals average scores: Division I, 35-17; II, 41-16; III, 35-15; IV, 34-23; V, 41-11.
2012, Week 11: Army-Navy Among Early Casualties
And then there were 40.
Twenty teams were eliminated in first-round, San Diego Section playoff games last week.
There were no upsets but maybe a mild surprise or two.
Army-Navy, 10-0 and coming off the best regular season in the school’s 102-year history, was knocked out by Calipatria, 41-21, in Division IV.
The teams had one common opponent. Army-Navy defeated Mountain Empire 30-16 and Calipatria topped the Redhawks 40-28.
Calipatria, 8-2 in the regular season, competed in the more robust Manzanita League. Army-Navy is a member of the Pacific League, of which Calipatria and other Manzanita clubs were members as recently as 2010.
Olympian, which drew a first-round bye and meets Mt. Carmel in the quarterfinals this week, is the County’s remaining unbeaten team at 10-0.
MANY BLOWOUTS
Hilltop’s 35-28, overtime victory over Orange Glen represented the most closely contested game, in D-III. Of historic import, Del Norte’s first-ever playoff appearance in the school’s fourth year was a success. The Night Hawks overcame Mission Bay 34-28 in a D-IV matchup after trailing 28-20 at halftime.
Average scores: Division I, 43-18; II, 35-16; III, 30-9; IV, 31-17; V, 49-18.
2012: Game Officials Recognized; Students to be Honored
More than 400 members of the San Diego County Football Officials’ Association, including four active NFL game officials, gathered at the Hall of Champions this week for their annual awards dinner.
Among those attending were referee Mike Carey (University High/Santa Clara University), back judge Don Carey (St. Augustine/California-Riverside), umpire Garth DeFelice (Patrick Henry/San Diego State), and line judge Tim Podraza (University of Nebraska).
Steve Coover, principal at Mount Miguel and son of the late football coach and official Chuck Coover, received the George A. Schutte Memorial award for service to the organization. Other awards and recognition, some of which were accompanied by verbal but good natured penalty flags, were part of the program.
YOUTH FOOTBALL FUND
The football officials also announced they would be awarding an annual college football scholarship in the amount of $2,500 to two deserving high school senior football players.
The San Diego Youth Football Fund’s was formed in 1999 with a mission to provide financial assistance to youth football players who live in San Diego County.
This marks the second year that college scholarships will be awarded. Mater Dei’s Fernando Gonzalez and Poway High’s Tyler Kasl were honored in 2011.
Basic criteria for those who apply for a scholarship includes academic standing, football participation, leadership, community service, and recommendation of the varsity coach.
