Canyon Pride Runs High in Shrine Game Standoff

The smile wasn’t as big as the ones Harry Welch has had after winning Southern Section championships.

But the smile was unmistakably there; so was Welch’s pride.

“You tell me,” the Canyon High football coach was saying after Saturday’s Shrine All-Star game at the Rose Bowl. “Who was better on that field than Joe Zacharia or Randy Austin?”

Zacharia and Austin showed again Saturday why Canyon has won 38 straight games and three straight Northwestern Conference championships.

The two former Cowboys helped hold the North team to 109 yards in total offense. The South team was even worse, gaining only 91 yards, and the result was a 3-3 tie before a crowd of 14,516.

Zacharia started at nose guard for the South, while Austin started at linebacker. Both had busy nights.

Zacharia, the only player on the South team without a Division I scholarship, led the team with 14 tackles, including six solos. Austin had eight tackles and one interception, which he nearly returned for a score. He also was involved in a brief scuffle with the North’s Kevin McGill late in the first half.

“The 60 best players in California were on the field,” said Welch, one of the coaches for the South team. “Again, tell me who was better?”

On this night, no team stood out over the other, even though the North team went into the game as the decided underdog.

“Basically, they didn’t come out more ready than us,” Zacharia said, “but more hateful. Everything they had read was about the South this and the South that.

“I wished we would have won and I think we should have won.”

Said Austin: “Well, it’s better than a loss. I’d rather have had a win, but it doesn’t count as a loss.”

Austin almost made the South a winner when he intercepted a Troy Taylor pass at the North 49 and returned it 27 yards midway through the second quarter.

“I was thinking six points,” said the UCLA-bound Austin. “When I got to the middle I saw the whole left side open.”

But a host of North defenders hauled Austin down. “They have some fast guys on that team,” Austin said.

Had Austin reached the end zone it wouldn’t have counted, because the South was guilty of clipping on the return.

The Austin interception set up one of the few scoring opportunities the South had. Westlake’s Gary Wellman provided one of the others.

With just under four minutes remaining in the third quarter, Wellman took a pass from Claremont’s Dan McGwire and turned it into a 37-yard gain to the North 25.

It turned out to be Wellman’s only reception of the game.

Wellman said the South’s lack of offense was “real frustrating.”

“We came out kind of flat,” said Wellman, bound for USC. “We just didn’t click.”

Still, Wellman was satisfied to have played in a Shrine game.

“I was just happy to be here,” he said.

Simi Valley’s M.J. Nelson felt much the same way.

“It was real fun. I’m just glad I had the chance to play in the Rose Bowl,” said Nelson, who had three receptions for 28 yards, all in the first half.

Nelson will next play for Colorado, as will Notre Dame’s John Perak, who started at tight end for the South.

Perak did not catch a pass, but did recover a fumble by the South’s J.J. Flannigan at the South’s six.

Welch was in charge of the South’s defense and had nothing but praise for it. “To hold them to three points was sensational,” he said.

Two familiar faces certainly had a hand in that.