County’s Top Teams Get Down, Dirty

The won-lost records of the Esperanza and Los Alamitos High School football teams were spotless, stainless, unsullied, unblemished.

Seven-and-oh versus seven-and-oh.

Immaculate perfection.

Friday night, the fates and the elements conspired to take these teams, the finest in Orange County, and treat them like your basic barnyard variety sow.

First a rainstorm drenched Placentia and Valencia High School’s Bradford Stadium, where this year’s Prep Game of the Decade was to be held.

Then, with school administrators either unable or unwilling to call an audible, an afternoon tussle between the Valencia and Anaheim junior varsities was allowed to proceed as scheduled at Bradford, churning the center of the field into a consistency vaguely resembling spoiled chocolate mousse.

Finally, Esperanza and Los Alamitos took the field--and you could hear them thinking: “You take it . . . No, you take it.”

The players weren’t sure if they were supposed to play in this stuff or make pottery out of it.

From the first center snap and the first play from the line of scrimmage, the Aztecs and Griffins had mud in their eyes.

And in their helmets.

And in their shoes.

And in their mouths.

Two plays into the game, the back of Los Alamitos quarterback Tim Carey’s jersey was already obliterated, covered in slop after getting thrown into the trough by a blitzing Brad Kircher, Esperanza’s junior outside linebacker.

By the middle of the second quarter, another Aztec linebacker, Travis McCullough, was covered from logo to cleat in the sludge. Waiting on the sideline while the Esperanza offense did its thing, McCullough took off a goo-laden padded glove and squirted it with a water bottle. Sideline laundry service, while you wait.

Moments after this, a girl in a gleaming white “Esperanza Dance Team” sweat suit walked behind McCullough and his muddied mates and squealed to a friend, “Oooh! How dirty !”

These kind of conditions are supposed to produce defensive slogfests and final scores of 8-0, which was the final score the last time these teams met--in the 1991 Division III title, Los Alamitos emerging victorious.

Instead, Los Alamitos came out passing, Esperanza did what it could to keep up for a while and Los Alamitos scored 28 points in the first half alone, en route to a 34-14 triumph.

Carey conducted business as if he were operating on the Bonneville Salt Flats. First possession: Four quick completions to set up a 26-yard touchdown pass to George Sagen. Second possession: A 31-yard completion to Don Ruberio, followed immediately by a 16-yard touchdown pass to Sagen, their second of three such connections on the night.

Carey passed for 135 yards before halftime and wound up with 150. Seven passes to Sagen accounted for 101 of those yards.

“A really well-played game for the conditions,” said Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes, who would say that.

But, in fact, it was, especially when Carey was backpedaling in the mire and flinging upfield.

“I’ve never played in anything like this,” said Carey, smiling behind the splatter on his face. “Coach Barnes told us in the locker room the mud was pretty deep, but when I saw it for myself, I couldn’t believe it.”

Barnes told the Griffins one more thing before the game:

Passing the football got you this far. Don’t stop now.

“We actually wanted to throw the ball,” Carey said. “Usually, you think conditions like this help a team that runs the ball, like Esperanza. I thought the same thing until the coaches explained it to us.

“They said the defensive backs had the biggest disadvantage out there because they were backpedaling in the stuff. They had really bad footing out there.”

So they slipped and they slid and they sloshed and they scored a combined 48 points. It was a dirty, unsightly affair--unworthy, really, of two teams of this stature.

Don’t tell the Griffins, though. To them, Friday night was a thing of beauty.