A Man for Two Seasons : Long Beach Poly’s Herring: Point Guard to Quarterback

Michael Herring was not so much a quarterback as an athlete, but that was fine with Thomas Whiting and Jerry Jaso, co-coaches at Long Beach Poly High School. He had never played a down as a varsity quarterback, but that was fine with Whiting and Jaso, too.

The thinking was somewhere along the lines of, “Give the kid the ball and see what he can do with it.” So they took Herring, a former free safety and junior varsity wide receiver who was better known as a point guard on the basketball team, and gave him carte blanche with the offense of the No. 1 prep football team in California.

He was the question mark on an otherwise outstanding team from the beginning. But Whiting and Jaso, rookies themselves as head coaches at Poly, stuck by their plan to have Herring run the offense as he saw fit. That was in the summer, with coaches and players hoping to pump Herring full of confidence and knowledge during passing league competitions and two-a-day workouts.

Finally, the season-opener came, Sept. 20, at Gardena. The Poly defense lived up to its billing and held highly touted running back Brian Brown to 29 yards in 14 carries. Herring lived up to another kind of billing--as the weak link of the team. He completed 5 of 12 passes for 40 yards, with 10 yards his longest completion, and 3 interceptions before Eric Morgan moved from wide receiver to replace him and throw the winning touchdown pass in a 7-3 victory.

Whiting, who handles the offense, remembers Herring telling him on the sidelines, “When you came over and told me that Morgan was going in, I was the happiest person of all.”

Suddenly, just being a question mark wasn’t so bad.

“I guess I came in overconfident, with no reason to be,” Herring said this week. “I took the game lightly. When it came time to perform, they (Gardena) showed me a lot of things I didn’t study for. I was puzzled out there.

“I heard things here and there and all the heresay about how I played. My brother and sister were sitting in the stands and they heard some guy say, ‘That guy is a basketball player. Don’t put him out there and try to make him something he’s not.’ ”

Funny how they’re not shouting that from the stands anymore. Two weeks later, Herring had nearly everyone in his corner as he threw a pair of touchdown passes to Morgan to beat L.A. Banning, 19-10. But that was nothing compared to what he did last week in the first round of the Big Five Conference playoffs against Santa Fe Springs St. Paul--scoring pass plays of 64 yards to Michael Vaughn, 63 to Chris Roscoe, 30 and 28 to Morgan and another big gainer for a total of 217 yards with five completions.

Tonight, Herring and the Jackrabbits (9-1), ranked No. 7 in the state by Cal-Hi Sports, face a long drive and another tough opponent in the quarterfinals, last season’s conference runner-up, Fontana (8-3).

Herring has already had a long journey, just to get to this point. He nearly quit the team to concentrate on basketball, which he plans to play in college, after his showing against Gardena.

“I had a lot of thoughts drive through my mind that I should go right to basketball,” he said. “A lot of people said I should give up on football. But I wanted to stick with it and see it through.

“The fans are more behind me now. Eric Morgan’s brother said the first game that I shouldn’t even be out there on the field. I was standing on the sidelines Friday, and he came up right behind me. He said, ‘Way to go.’ ”

City teams are idle this week, but the playoffs resume next Friday with the semifinals.