Player of the Week : It’s Stark Contrast When Ray’s Kid Gets the Call

The collected forces of the American media had descended upon the campus of Capistrano Valley High School.

Actually, it was a couple of newspaper photographers, a newspaper reporter and a message from KABC-TV saying it was sending a reporter down soon with a camera crew. Sure it’s small potatoes if you play for the Dallas Cowboys. But for the Cougars’ players and coaches, the big time, starring Scott Stark, had arrived.

In his first varsity start, Stark completed 26 of 34 passes for 337 yards and 4 touchdowns to lead the Cougars to a 26-7 win over Foothill. For his performance Stark is The Times Player of the Week.

The fuss made over Stark disrupted any kind of continuity Coach Dick Enright had planned for Monday’s practice.

“Excuse me Coach, but can we get a shot of you giving instructions to Scott. Yes, point at the football. Perfect!” Did Enright mind?

“I wish you guys would show up every week,” he said.

But this week was special.

This was the week that Scott Stark got even just a bit.

He had endured a year of bitter disappointment and tragedy before this season. Life had taken two of the dearest things in his world. First it took football. Then his father.

Ray Stark had coached football at Ontario’s Chaffey High School since the beginning of time.

Well, close to 30 years. That was forever as far as Scott was concerned.

He remembers when he was 4-years-old, waking at 6 a.m. and sneaking into the back room to watch game films with Ray and his assistant coaches.

Whenever Ray would have to scout a team he took the family along.

“Everyone had a job,” Scott’s mother, Marian, said. “I remember I used to have to watch the kicking game . . . Scott, well, he watched the quarterbacks, of course.”

Scott said his father was not an emotional man. That’s why he and his brother’s didn’t cry at his funeral last June. Ray died of bone cancer.

“I know he wouldn’t have wanted us to be crying over him,” Scott said. “He didn’t believe in showing your emotions like that.”

So, Scott and brothers Harley and Randy, went about comforting the guests who did.

“It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” Enright said. “Here these men had just lost their father, and they were trying to help and comfort the guests. They never cried.”

Having faced such trauma, it’s not difficult to believe Stark when he says he wasn’t nervous before last week’s game.

Foothill has long been known for its defensive prowess. They prepared to dominate Capistrano Valley’s inexperienced offensive line, which had only one returning letterman.

But the Knights’ defense was mild compared to a grandstand of Cougar partisans who wondered why Stark, and not Nathan Call, was the Capistrano Valley quarterback.

Call had thrown for more than 1,500 yards last season, and was still in school and still in uniform. But he had moved--voluntarily--to receiver to make room for Stark.

“I think a lot of people thought Coach Enright was crazy for playing me,” Stark said. “After the game people just thought he was a genius.”

What looked like an overnight success actually was 10 years in the making. Stark has been playing quarterback since he was 8.

And he was not just a quarterback, but always a starting quarterback. Ask the Philadelphia Eagles’ Ron Jaworski what the difference is.

By his sophomore year at Chaffey, Scott had come full circle. Having once watched films, he was now in them. He played quarterback for his father.

But the relationship was short lived. Ray decided to retire after the season.

“He told me I can could go to any school I wanted since he was going to retire,” Stark said. “Just name the school and he’d find a house.”

Stark thought about Mater Dei, but a freshman named Todd Marinovich already had the Monarchs’ quarterback job. Los Altos and Damien were candidates, but Capistrano Valley finally won out.

The family moved just a few blocks away from the Capistrano Valley campus. However, through a variety of mix-ups Stark didn’t tryout for football until the day before the Cougars’ first game. By then Nathan Call, a junior, was the quarterback.

For the first time in his life Stark, a junior, was not playing.

“I know it ate him up but he never said a thing,” Enright said. “But he was just like his old man. Never complained. I used to apologize to both of them and they’d give me the same answer. ‘What can you do, Nathan’s having a great year.’ ”

Enright, a burly man with hands so large he shakes a person’s hand right up to the elbow, coached Dan Fouts for a season at the University of Oregon. He says, very cautiously, that Stark could eventually be as good.

“I think he’s better than Dan was at this age,” he said. “He’s got those strong wrists that give him such a quick release. That’s why when Foothill blitzed, which was a lot, they were helpless.”

After the game Marian Stark, giddy and tearful, ran across the field. Enright, a little frantic himself, met her half way.

“We were both so happy. He gave me this big bear hug,” Marian said. “He was so happy he lifted me right off the ground.”

Scott was much more subdued. One newspaper account said he spoke about the game, “hardly drawing an extra breath.”

But then that was to be expected. After all, he’s Ray’s kid.