Charter Oak Is Rolling With a Mergerers’ Row : Preps From 2 Schools Combine--Team Suddenly Averaging 45 Points a Game

Charter Oak High School of Covina hadn’t beaten Baldwin Park in football since 1976, and had won only twice in 11 tries since 1973.

Royal Oak High School, about a mile down the road, hadn’t beaten Baldwin Park since 1981 and had won only once in four tries since 1980.

But together, with the two schools wrapped into one, it was a whole new ballgame.

“I remember walking off the field after beating them,” Pat Castagnaro, Charter Oak athletic director, said recently. “I overheard one of their players say, ‘Well, it took two schools to beat us.’ ”

Baldwin Park, a Southeastern Conference finalist last season and one of the winningest teams of the ‘80s, was trounced by Charter Oak last month, 46-6. That put Baldwin Park in the same boat as a lot of other San Gabriel Valley teams, if that’s any consolation. This season, being ganged up on by the new-look, psychology-molded Charter Oak Chargers (nee Lancers, Royal Oak Romans) is nothing unusual.

In fact, it’s happening all the time. Last Friday, San Dimas came closer than anyone to beating Charter Oak, losing by 21 points. The defense did not give up anything, so the Chargers head into tonight’s home game against Azusa (4-1-2) as the top-ranked team in the Southeastern Conference. In seven games this season, Charter Oak has outscored its opponents 315 to 26 for an average of 45 points scored to 3.7 points allowed per game.

“I would call a play that last year would pick up four or five yards,” Coach Lou Farrar said. “Now, we do the same one and--pow!--there the guy goes, 65 yards down the sideline for a touchdown.

“Before, the offense was like a go-kart, kind of bouncing up and down the field. Now, we’re like a full-blown dragster. And we’re as surprised about it as the next guy.”

How could Farrar have anticipated what was going to happen? Few coaches are put in the position of being able to pick the best players from two schools, or, on the other hand, of fusing two factions into one.

The situation in the Charter Oak Unified School District was brought about by declining enrollment at both Charter Oak and Royal Oak. In fact, Royal Oak, a four-year school, was down to 800 students.

The decision to merge the schools in September was greeted almost immediately by controversy and protest. Which school would stay open? What about school colors? Which nickname to pick?

Football wasn’t too high on the list of concerns at that point. And few could see that better than Farrar, who had graduated from Charter Oak in 1964, when it was still a one-high school district, and later became the successful coach at the newly opened cross-town school.

“There was a definite division in the community,” he said. “Most people didn’t want this in any shape, size or form. There was a bitter battle over the whole issue as to what school should be closed and all that. If the parents had gotten along together as well as the kids, things would have been a lot better off.”

The decision was to keep Charter Oak open and convert Royal Oak into a junior high school. The Royal Oak students would have to switch and “Be true to your school,” to another school. Enemy No. 1, no less.

Farrar said, however, that the transition, as the school jumped from 1,200 to 1,915 students in the three months of summer vacation, went surprisingly well, especially with the football team.

“I suggest that somebody go ask the Trojans and Bruins what it would be like if they got together,” he said. “They would say it would be like mixing oil and water. That’s the same with us. Everyone was looking around and kind of testing the other guy out.”

Everyone seems to have passed.

The offense, which has scored 46 points or more in five of seven games and is only 10 points behind the pace that gave Diamond Bar the state record for most points in a season, dipped into the Royal Oak lineup to get a running back, Jeff Obert, and a quarterback, John Strycula.

Charter Oak’s contributions in the backfield are Mike and Mark Smith, twins who have combined for 675 yards and 10 touchdowns and have given the Chargers a 1-2-3 punch with the running game.

Obert, a senior with 938 yards and 19 touchdowns, is the best of all. At 6 feet 2 inches and 235 pounds, he has the size to crash up the middle and the speed to turn up the sidelines for a touchdown, as he did against San Dimas.

“He is the most dedicated football player I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been coaching for 17 years,” Farrar said. “He took two weeks off after the end of last season and hasn’t missed a workout since, even during the summer. Five, six, seven days a week.”

Farrar has a degree in psychology from California, and his tests have come more along those lines. Nothing like a little “non-directed counseling and therapy” and molding “egos, masculinities and that whole thing” to get the season started.

He said that there have been no gripes about players coming from another school to take a starting job, or talk of last season’s teams. Not even of favoritism in a program that now has 11 assistant coaches who graduated from Royal Oak.

One widely recognized psychological ploy has relieved much of the strain.

“When you’re winning, that really solves a lot of the problems,” Castagnaro, the athletic director, said. “When you’re undefeated and scoring that many points and opponents are scoring that few points and you’re in first place, that takes care of a lot of the kids being happy. Some are pleased just to be a part of a successful program, even if they don’t get to play much.”

The problems in turning Charter Oak into a one-team school have come from the outside.

“We had some parents stand up after we scored in the first game and say, ‘That’s two Royal Oak touchdowns to one for Charter Oak,’ ” Farrar recalled. “I don’t want to hear things like that. The Romans are in the history books, the Lancers are in the history books. All I’m concerned about now is Charger history.”

In that sense, Royal Oak die-hards are making it difficult for Farrar to live down his past and what went on at Royal Oak before he arrived--15 straight winning seasons and nine victories in the last 12 games against the cross-town rival. Charter Oak, by comparison, has had 10 losing records and two at .500 since going 7-2 in 1972.

Now, Farrar claims he doesn’t even know how many starters on the 1985 team are from Royal Oak and how many are from Charter Oak, and he doesn’t want to spend time worrying about it, either.

After all, there are other schools to be ganged-up on and a championship to win.

“Everyone else may look at it as two against one,” Farrar said. “But it’s really one-half and one-half against one. That makes a whole. And we are one team.”