Edison Awaiting Complex Approval : Donations to Provide State-of-the-Art Football Facility

As ambitious building projects go, this one will not provide Huntington Beach with an answer to the Taj Mahal.

On the other hand, it is expected to beat the Winchester Mystery House to completion.

Like the Taj Mahal and the Winchester Mystery House, its shape and purpose are unique, at least in its own context.

The architectural plans depict a long, narrow building that bears more than a passing resemblance to a glider-plane hangar.

Stanford University has a similarly-shaped building, where academics release their aggressions by smashing atomic particles.

But this project is the athletic offspring of Edison High School. If and when construction is completed, Edison will have a football complex and training facility like few others on the high school level.

It will be a poolside complex, which explains its awkward, 165-by-18-foot shape.

Plans include a state-of-the-art video room, sauna, whirlpools, offices, conference rooms, showers, kitchenette, trophy case, air-conditioning, a roof-top tower for videotaping practice, perhaps even a players’ lounge with a pool table and television.

The Club Med should offer so much. Why not toss in a helipad while they’re at it?

“We didn’t feel a need for anything like that,” said Booster Club President Terry Adams.

Before local taxpayers gasp and grope for their wallets, the Huntington Beach Union High School District will not be paying for the building.

In fact, it will be a gift to the district. The Edison High School Booster Club and football Coach Bill Workman hope to raise the entire amount through donations.

Although Workman estimated the value of the building to be about $150,000, Adams believes actual costs could be closer to $65,000 if the bulk of the materials and labor are donated, rather than purchased.

It will also be less expensive because the planners intend to take advantage of three existing brick walls that serve as a windbreak for the pool.

On the surface, this may sound like a pipe dream. But the project has progressed far beyond the talk-is-cheap phase.

Although the official fund-raising campaign has not been announced, more than $20,000 worth of wood, skilled carpentry labor, plumbing, carpeting and flooring have already been pledged. A small forest of lumber--three truckloads--sits behind the eastern site, awaiting the go-ahead.

“We haven’t built anything yet, but we’ve come a long way from drawing it out on a napkin,” Adams said, recalling his first conversation with Workman about the idea late last year.

The organizers are waiting until the plans are approved by the state, which Workman expects to happen as soon as today, before launching the fund-raising campaign.

But the committee has done the groundwork, and stacks of elegant mailers are waiting to go out. The cream-colored cards look like an upscale wedding announcement, the difference being an artist’s conception of the building on the cover--printed in Charger green--and the polite request for donations inside.

The only part of the picture that may never be brought to reality is the range of mountains that provides an artistic, if slightly misleading, backdrop to the scene.

When someone compared the drawing to the actual site and pointed out that discrepancy to Workman, he glanced at the empty horizon and replied, “Well, we’ll have to truck some mountains in.”

The architectural plans were drawn by Hal Woods, of the Costa Mesa firm of McHale, Woods and Associates. It happens that Woods’ wife is a former Charger cheerleader, and school loyalties run deep.

The school district already has approved the plans, and exacted a promise from organizers that once construction begins, the job will be finished in six months so the site doesn’t become a safety hazard.

Adams, a plumbing contractor, said the work could be finished even faster, if no snags arise. The grand opening is scheduled for the 1986 football season.

This is not the first time Edison has pioneered a football concept.

Edison was one of the first high schools to hire a team trainer in the early 1970s, the only Orange County school to have live radio broadcasts of games, the first to give officials wireless microphones to announce calls, the first to require knee braces, and the first to institute voluntary drug and alcohol testing of players.

Workman, always in the avant-garde, expects that this new project will be greeted with the usual chorus of griping from some supporters of rival schools.

“We always take shots from other people,” he said. “It was the same with the drug testing. People said, ‘There goes Edison grandstanding again.’ There are a lot of negative people in the world.

“If nobody else has it, I don’t think people should take shots at us. All we’re trying to do is better our program and give our kids a chance to experience something worthwhile.”

As Workman likes to say, “If you’re going to do it, why not do it first class?”

How ‘bout those Argonauts?

The Garden Grove High School basketball team has jumped out to its best start in nine seasons. The Argonauts are 3-0, or 4-0, if you count a victory against the alumni team. In its tournament last week, Garden Grove defeated Loara, Laguna Hills and El Dorado to take the championship for the first time since 1977.

The last team to manage that feat was led by center Mark Baker, one famous alum who had a fine sports performance last week. Baker advanced to the finals of the $125,000 professional bowling tournament in Saginaw, Mich., earning $11,000 for his second-place finish. Argonaut Coach Gene Campbell said Baker, who still resides in Garden Grove, dropped by the gym for a visit last month during homecoming week.

A parade of talent: Three of the state’s best basketball players will be featured in the 16-team Sonora Tournament beginning Tuesday at two sites. Katella forward Bob Erbst, Brea-Olinda center Kevin Walker and Hacienda Heights Wilson center Scott Williams are the featured attractions in the five-day tournament.

Erbst, who has signed with USC, will play at 6:30 on Tuesday night against Magnolia at Sunny Hills High. Williams, who signed with North Carolina, is scheduled to play Wednesday night at 6:30 at Sunny Hills.

Walker, who signed with UCLA, will play at 8 on Wednesday night at Sonora against La Habra. The tournament also includes Capistrano Valley, which had three players sign with Division I colleges. The Cougars meet Canyon at 6:30 on Tuesday night at Sonora.

Prep Notes

The 27th All-Orange County football team will appear in Wednesday’s edition of The Times. The 23 players selected to the first team will be honored at an awards program at at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel at 9:30 a.m. Sunday. Guest speaker will be Lt. General Winfield W. Scott Jr., superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy. . . . The Orange County chapter of the Southern Section’s Baseball Umpires Assn. will conduct a clinic on Monday, at Cerro Villa Junior High in Villa Park time. The classroom clinic, scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., is open to high school graduates. It will cover techniques and rules interpretation. The organization will also conduct a field clinic on 10 a.m. Saturday at Esperanza High. For further information, contact instructional chairman Bill Kann at 528-3938. . . . Santa Ana’s appearance in the championship game of the Southern Conference football playoffs this week will mark the ninth time in 10 years that the Century League has had a representative in the 3-A or Southern Conference finals. The only exception came in 1982 when the finalists were Esperanza and Los Altos . . . Pacifica football player Jason Brusuelas, one of the better defensive tackles in the county, was scheduled to undergo arthroscopic surgery this weekend to determine the extent of the ligament damage in his knee. Brusuelas, a 6-2, 245-pound senior, suffered the injury early in the third quarter of the Mariners’ 7-0 loss to Santa Ana in the second round of the Southern Conference playoffs.. . . More than 1,200 athletic directors from around the nation have registered to attend the National High School Athletic Directors Conference, Dec. 15-18, at the Anaheim Marriott. Larry Arason, director of athletics for the Santa Ana Unified District, is the chairman of the host committee.