High School Football: Good Even When Bad

When it was all over, Santiago High School running back Hao Dinh sat on some steps outside Garden Grove Stadium and cried.

He didn’t want anyone to see him, but someone did.

The Cavaliers, 44-0 losers in their opener the week before, had flopped again. This time it was the Mustangs of Costa Mesa who did the clobbering, crushing the poor Cavs, 25-0.

The tiny Dinh, who might have paid off someone to get his vitals jacked up to 5-6 and 160 pounds for the game program, scored Santiago’s only touchdown on a dazzling run around end, only to have the whole thing called back because of a lousy penalty.

You could feel for Dinh, seeing as how the Cavs don’t figure to get many chances like that again.

But you didn’t have the heart to tell him that. Given the state of world affairs, another Santiago loss didn’t seem so crushing. You couldn’t tell him you were there only because someone had promised you that this would be the lousiest game Orange County football had to offer on a Friday night.

You couldn’t tell him that you counted the crowd in Garden Grove Stadium by hand and didn’t make it past 300, or that you couldn’t help laughing when you read Coach Fred DiPalma’s quote on Santiago’s chances this year. “If we don’t get any injuries,” he said, “we should start the season with about 32 varsity players.”

You didn’t have the heart to tell Dinh that the lighting on the field was so poor that you could barely make a shadow of a rabbit with your hand against the back wall of the snack shack.

You couldn’t tell him that the coffee was so bad that it reacted like sulfuric acid when the dregs hit the bleacher steps.

You couldn’t tell him that his team almost had as many cheerleaders (21) as players or that the team that bullied his around had itself been a county throw-rug for years, recently moving into a league (Pacific Coast) that was created for such wayward programs with sagging linemen and enrollments.

You couldn’t tell him that with 160-pound linemen blocking in front of him, he might want to save some tears for next week or the one after.

You couldn’t tell him that it was no big deal, that his only crime was to have taken part in a crummy high school football game, complete with everything that comes with an admission ticket, including:

--Programs that provide no information.

--A public-address announcer who informs you that a tackle was made by “a whole lotta fellas.”

--Cheerleaders who don’t know the score and strike up a cry for “Defense” when their team has the ball.

--50-50 raffles and booster club meetings at Pizza Huts.

--A player who crashes through a cheerleader’s banner only to get his feet tangled in the paper. Friday, it was Santiago’s Alfred Martinez, and he took three teammates to the ground with him.

--An alum in a letterman’s jacket who will never forget how much better his school’s team used to be. “Man, we were quick that year,” one Costa Mesa grad said to another. “We had two linemen over 200 pounds!”

--A girl in the drill team who is petrified with fear, forgetting everything she ever practiced during one horrifying halftime show.

You didn’t want to tell Dinh that most people had pretty much lost interest after Costa Mesa made it 25-0 in the fourth quarter on a touchdown pass from Mike Crowe to Mike Richie with 8:54 remaining.

You couldn’t tell him that the only thing that held your interest was a “rad” fight that broke out between two freshmen behind the visitors’ bleachers.

“I don’t care,” one kid said as friends pulled him away from an imminent pounding. “The guy’s been bugging me since the seventh grade.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to tell Dinh that the alma mater sounded off key or that he might have found guys more his own size had he gone out for wrestling.

You couldn’t tell him because you realized that it is all these things that make high school football so much fun. Even bad high school football.

Here, there are no contracts or holdouts, no television. Not a swelled head on the field, either.

It is sport in a rare state of innocence.

You realized that this was what football was about. It’s winning and losing and crying, too. It’s bad hot dogs and splinters in your pants and thermoses and blankets. It’s living and learning and laughing.

It’s Hao Dinh.

It was a great game.