Football Is Eliminated at Cal Christian

Only one week before the start of the high school football season, California Christian High announced Thursday that it would drop its program because of a lack of players.

“It was a very tough decision,” said Norm Helmuth, coach of the Sepulveda school that played eight-man football in the Small Schools Division. “But we had only three players out for the team. We were hoping to generate some more interest, but we had to let the schools on our schedule know what was going on in order to be fair to them.”

The Heritage League, of which California Christian has been a member since 1981, now has only two schools participating in eight-man football: Pilgrim High and Coast Christian.

“I don’t know what our status will be with the CIF now,” Pilgrim Coach Rich Lowe said. “With only two teams in the league, I don’t think our league champion will receive an automatic invitation to the playoffs. To hear this news at this point, I’m stunned, to say the least.”

California Christian is the second Heritage League team to fold since the end of last season. Defending league champion Los Feliz Hills, which played with only nine players last season, canceled its program because of a lack of players. Both California Christian and Los Feliz Hills still belong to the league, which has eight member schools.

Unlike Lowe, Coast Christian Coach Dan Pride said he wasn’t surprised about California Christian’s decision.

“I knew something was wrong over there,” he said. “I just couldn’t put my finger on it. It’s quite clear now that they just don’t have the organization that’s needed to operate a program. The Heritage League should look at getting some schools involved that are stable, but it’s different in a small schools situation.”

Helmuth says he did everything he could to retain the program.

“But you need more than three players,” he said. “I told my three guys to call their friends and try some peer pressure to get them out for the team. One of them said, ‘No, that won’t work, they’re a bunch of wimps.’

“We have three or four good athletes at this school who could have played. They didn’t want to get injured playing football because basketball is their sport. At a school this size, just about every athlete has to play every sport.”

California Christian, at which students may start in kindergarten, has 100 boys and girls enrolled in grades nine through 12.

In 1979, the Knights’ football program appeared to be on an upswing. The Knights finished the season with an 8-2 record, winning the Delphic League title and losing in the semifinals to eventual champion Rio Hondo Prep.

California Christian qualified for the Southern Section playoffs in 1984, but fell to 3-5 last season.

This year, football fell off almost everyone’s list of priorities.

“We just didn’t have the interest in football, it’s that simple,” said Jerry McBee, a school administrator who approved the cancellation of the program. “We’ll try again.”

According to Scott Cathcart, Southern Section spokesman, California Christian’s situation is common among small schools.

“If it was a big public school in the Big-Five Conference, it would be big news,” he said. “It’s nothing new at the eight-man level. Last year, we had two schools, Newport Christian and Central Christian, that dropped their programs after the season had already started.”

The Southern Section may declare Pilgrim and Coast Christian as free-lance teams, meaning their overall records would determine whether they make the playoffs.

“For either Coast Christian or us to get to the playoffs now, as a free-lance team, we’re going to have to win just about every game,” Lowe said. “First Lutheran has applied for membership in our league, but that’s not going to save us this year. It takes time for something like that to make it through all the proper channels.”

Said Pride: “It’s really unfair to the other teams in the league, ourselves and Pilgrim. And it makes the league look bad. We had California Christian scheduled to play us at our place for homecoming. Now, at this point in the year, I’ve got to scramble to find some school to fill that spot in our schedule.”

California Christian still fields teams in girls volleyball, boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball and boys and girls track.

Whether it will ever field a football team again is a question that remains unanswered.

“There’s a possibility that we may just go to soccer,” Helmuth said.

McBee isn’t ready to give up the idea of bringing back football.

“I sure hope we can,” he said. “With schools our size, this sort of thing runs in cycles. I know we’ll cycle back again.”