THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Defectors Threaten Foundation That Gave Canyon a ’38 Special’

When Ken Sollom first heard the news, he thought the football team was falling apart.

All seemed lost. The championships, the 38-game winning streak, the glory. Sollom, Canyon High’s quarterback, could feel it all slipping away.

“I took the news hard. I tried to talk to the guys, but it didn’t do any good,” Sollom said.

Those “guys”--three Canyon football players--suddenly and surprisingly walked away from one of the premier high school football programs in Southern California. The Cowboys have won three straight Southern Section Northwestern Conference championships, and the team’s 38 consecutive victories represent the state’s longest current winning streak.

Lance Cross, Jay Maltzman and Travis Regnolds, three All-Golden League players as juniors last year, played important roles in that record. But in a matter of a few days last May, all three went from show stoppers to no-shows. Shock waves rocked through the Canyon program, and even Coach Harry Welch, a wellspring of confidence and self-assurance, was shaken.

“It had an unsettling effect on the team, and I was really concerned as I would be with any young man who spent time in the program,” he said. “But I was especially concerned when three of the most talented players in the school left the team. When you lose three kids with chances to get college scholarships, that’s upsetting.”

Although the players quit at about the same time, each had his own reasons for leaving, and none bears hard feelings toward the program or Welch. In fact, Cross already has returned to the fold. Maltzman and Regnolds insist they are gone for good.

Cross, a 5-8, 170-pound All-Southern Section running back, rushed for more than 1,000 yards in each of the last two seasons. Fatigue drove him from football.

“I was tired of putting in all the time,” he said. “I left but I wanted to keep the door open. I got some personal things straightened out and now I’m where I should be.”

Regnolds, a 6-0, 170-pound all-league tight end, also played shortstop and pitched for the Cowboy baseball team, posting a 6-2 record with a 1.23 earned-run average. Batting balls apparently has more appeal than butting heads for Regnolds, who said he dropped football to concentrate on baseball.

Maltzman’s case is more mysterious. The 6-2, 205-pound offensive lineman has received ample interest from college football programs, but the feeling is not mutual. Teammates say they still have no idea why Maltzman left the team.

He said he wanted to concentrate on baseball even though the first baseman left the team last season. “Bouncing around from sport to sport is over,” he said.

Perhaps. But stability has returned to Canyon football. Cross’s reappearance two weeks ago helped, but so did Welch’s answer to almost every problem: hard work.

Welch works his team three hours a day, four days a week throughout the summer. Despite the rigorous schedule, few signs of fatigue were evident during a workout this week. Instead, the practice looked like an advertisement for a health club. Sweat and well-muscled bodies abounded.

Even “light drills” were attacked with gusto. Between weight training sessions, players ran through plays with no pads in an 11-on-11 drill in which contact is supposed to be minimal. But don’t tell that to the Cowboys. On each snap, the field became a blur of 22 bodies in collision. Players bounced off each other and onto the ground. The grunts and groans from the field made opening night against Hart High seem much closer than six weeks away.

Tim Wilson, a 5-10, 174 linebacker who will be a senior this fall, may be an extreme example of Cowboy dedication. During spring practice, he took an elbow in his right eye, opening a small cut. After a quick visit to the first aid kit, he returned to complete practice.

“I closed the cut myself and my doctor was pretty mad,” Wilson said. “He said I could have lost my eye, but I’m a good doctor, I guess.”

A month ago, Wilson opened a cut on his head during a drill and allowed his doctor to do the honors, taking three stitches to close the wound. He was at practice the next day, but the accident wave continued. About a week later, Wilson tried to hop a fence at the Canyon practice field but made it only halfway. He stayed atop the fence, his right thigh impaled on a protruding piece of steel. “There might be some meat left up there,” Wilson said.

That cut required 12 stitches but failed to keep him out of the weight room.

“That’s what all Cowboy football players are like,” Wilson said. “Coach Welch has made the point and we figured it out, if you work hard and do something over and over again, you can be successful.”

Not all Cowboys are as driven as Wilson, but Welch has been impressed with his team’s resiliency in the face of the departed players.

“We never panicked. We made some adjustments, but mostly it was the players who handled the situation with great dignity. They didn’t go around bad mouthing anybody. They pulled together and that’s the best part,” he said.

They did have their moments, though.

“They kind of let us down,” Wilson said about the players who quit. “I was disappointed and felt poorly. When Lance came back I felt good and I still want the others to come back.”

Not all the Cowboys are as sympathetic.

“I’m glad they quit,” sophomore lineman Justin Fix said. “They wouldn’t have given it everything they’ve got. People who don’t care, leave. To be a Cowboy, you have to work harder than the rest. It becomes part of you, the most important thing you do.”

Even former Cowboys are upset. Joe Zacharia, last year’s nose guard who will play for Valley College this fall, has tried to persuade Maltzman and Regnolds to reconsider.

“I told them they’re making a big mistake, and I made the same mistake. I quit for two days before my junior year and they were the worst two days of my life. There was no reason to quit. They talk about the beach, girls, doing this or doing that. It’s all a bunch of baloney,” he said.

Players have left the Canyon program before, sometimes as many as 10 a season, Welch said. But he’s never lost players of this caliber. Still, he manages to ferret out a positive from the situation.

“It’s not like these kids are diseased,” he said about the missing players. “They’re not negative-attitude people. But they didn’t want to be a part of the football program. Had they remained or been forced or pressured by family or peers into staying, the team might not be better off.”

Zacharia goes Welch one better.

“I don’t think the team is going to be hurt by it,” he said. “The character of the team overcomes obstacles like that. We’re still going to win. This will just get them mad.”