THE BELL RINGER : Salvadoran Waldir Guerra May Kick Westchester Out of the 2-A Playoffs Tonight

Bell High School will bring a 10-0 record and the Eastern League Player of the Year, quarterback Eliud Pacheco, into its City 2-A semifinal game tonight at 7:30.

The Eagles’ opponent, Westchester (9-1), is more physical, however, especially with a pair of 200-pound running backs, Derrick Franklin and Keith Bowen.

Bell has gone undefeated primarily because of Pacheco and a swarming defense coached by Ray Rodriguez, who played linebacker on USC’s 1972 national championship team.

Westchester’s only loss was to Venice, 10-8, and Venice will play in the other semifinal tonight against Roosevelt. Tonight’s winners will play in the championship game next Thursday at East Los Angeles College.

So look for the Bell-Westchester game to be close. And if that’s the case, look for Bell to go to its ringer.

Senior kicker Waldir Guerra, all 5 feet 8 inches and 145 pounds of him, has made 8 of 11 field-goal attempts, 4 of 42 yards or longer. His misses were from 37, 56 and 62 yards. He also has booted 24 of 25 extra points. He has done all of this in a sport he couldn’t have told you the first thing about before last year.

Guerra, a native of El Salvador, was sent by his parents to live with cousins in the United States to escape the civil war. Soccer really is his game. His success in football, coaches in both sports say, only proves again what an extraordinary athlete he is.

“In practice, he’s been hitting from about 70 yards,” football Coach Tosh Nitta said. “He’s got a fantastic leg.”

The rest of him is rather extraordinary, too, since he has played both sports this fall.

And there’s some question, too, as to which leg it is that’s fantastic.

Against Marshall, in the third game of the season, Guerra was bothered by a soccer injury, a charley horse in his kicking leg, the right. But he had grown fond of American football and didn’t want to miss the game.

So he kicked anyway, got most of his kickoffs to the five-yard line and made all the extra points--with his left leg.

He sprained an ankle playing soccer the night before the football game against Roosevelt, but taped it up and kicked three field goals in a 24-15 victory.

Playing for the soccer team, which took an 8-1 record into Thursday’s game with Roosevelt, Guerra had already broken his own City record with 11 goals in a game against Jordan. That also put him No. 2 on the all-time national list behind Marcos Arreola of Calexico, who scored 12 against Calipatria in 1980.

Coach Bill Albano, who was not told until the next day that his star had been close to a record, moved Guerra from forward to defense for the second half.

Guerra has scored 103 goals in his high school career and, with four regular-season games remaining before the playoffs, is a good bet to break the national three-year mark of 110 by Gilbert Sanchez, who played at Montgomery High in Chula Vista from 1978-80.

Jordan dropped its soccer program shortly after losing to Bell, 17-1, but has since restored it and the teams will play again, much to the delight of Albano, who figures that Guerra will have another good shot at the record. “I had a sigh of relief,” he said.

That game, however, is scheduled for the same day as the City football final, and the two may even run together.

That may be looking past tonight’s game, but it does bring up the burnout factor.

“Of course he is tired,” Albano said. “That’s only natural since he never gets any rest.”

The recent rains have made things worse by forcing Bell to postpone one of its soccer matches until next week, leaving Guerra the following schedule:

Thursday--Soccer, vs. Roosevelt.

Tonight--Football, vs. Westchester.

Monday--Soccer, makeup game vs. Garfield.

Tuesday--Soccer, vs. Fremont.

Thursday--Either soccer, vs. Jordan to close the regular season, or the City 2-A football final if Bell wins tonight.

But Guerra, doesn’t mind spending the energy beyond soccer. “They (the football team) really needed some guy to kick the ball,” he said. “Some other guy was trying to do the kickoff with his right foot, and it only got to the 30-yard line.

“At first I didn’t want to play (football) at all. But they told me just to kick the ball. I started to like it and then I decided to play in all the games.”

Is there anything he doesn’t like about the American game?

“When they return the ball after a kickoff, you have to block them,” he said.

Of course, he meant tackle , but he is still learning the game, and who would have thought he would have come even this far? The first time he ever kicked a football in a game was during last season’s playoffs.

Albano, who came here from Italy in 1959, was Guerra’s first holder during those first practices. Guerra would finish a 2 1/2-hour soccer match, sometimes with overtime periods, and head over to football practice to calmly boot 50-yarders. The two were close friends then, and are even closer now that Albano is on the sideline for each football game.

Part of him is also on the field with Guerra.

“Of course I get worried,” he said. “I was at one game and saw this one 200-pound guy fall on him. I went running up from the other end of the field and started screaming at that player, ‘Get out of there!’

“I tell (Guerra) now that once he kicks the ball, get out of the way.”

Naturally. Better to save himself for the sport he’s really good at.