THE BALANCE OF POWER AT CRESPI HIGH : Russell White’s Chillin’ Leaves Opposition Cold

Russell White sat on a couch in front of a big-screen TV, watching Seattle running back Curt Warner dart between members of the San Diego defense on Monday Night Football.

He wore a Crespi T-shirt, jeans and a pair of Adidas without laces--the look made popular by Run-D.M.C., one of his favorite rap groups. He was comfortable. He was relaxed. He was chillin’.

“That’s his favorite word,” said Helen White, Russell’s mother. “Chillin’. That’s him.”

But there is more to Russell White than relaxing, hanging out with friends and being cool. The 15-year-old sophomore is sort of a pioneer at Crespi High, where, as a black athlete at a predominantly white school, he plays the most visible position on an undefeated football team.

White, a running back and safety for the Celts, is the nephew of former Heisman Trophy winner Charles White and the cousin of former All-Pro defensive back Kermit Alexander. Although White’s varsity football career is only four games old, he already has shown ability at least on par with his Uncle Charlie at the same stage of his career.

He is averaging 15.6 yards a carry, having carried 39 times for 610 yards. He has scored eight touchdowns. If he continues at this pace, he will break the school’s season rushing and scoring records by the eighth game of the season.

“There isn’t a whole lot of coaching involved,” Crespi Coach Bill Redell said. “He’s a natural talent. He has great peripheral vision and he knows how to run. He reminds me of an O.J. Simpson, Tony Dorsett and Marcus Allen-type player.”

Those types of comparisons were thrust upon White before he played his first down for the varsity. He was on edge before the season-opening game against El Rancho, but the calming influence of junior running back J.J. Lasley helped settle him down.

“This is varsity ball--they look pretty big,” Lasley said White told him. “Are you sure they don’t hit too hard?”

Lasley grinned.

“They’re big, Russell,” he said. “But they aren’t going to hit you or me because we’re going to be chillin’ in the end zone.”

Lasley was right, at least about White. Lasley broke his hand after Crespi’s opening game, but White’s varsity career has been nothing but highlights:

Game 1 vs. El Rancho: “I was nervous,” White said. “I was a little bit scared because I wanted to impress people.” He rushed for 151 yards on 4 carries and scored touchdowns on runs of 36 and 78 yards. He also had a 68-yard touchdown run nullified by a penalty. Crespi won, 46-0.

Game 2 vs. Burbank: “I wanted to play in front of the home crowd,” White said. “They wanted to see what I could do--I gave them a pretty good show.” He rushed for 108 yards on 10 carries and scored touchdowns on runs of 1 and 38 yards and on a 74-yard pass reception. Crespi won, 33-7.

Game 3 vs. Santa Barbara: “First game I went over 10 carries,” White said. “I’ll take it as many times as you can give it to me.” He rushed for 193 yards on 14 carries and had touchdown runs of 71 and 7 yards. Crespi won, 28-0.

Game 4 vs. Westminster: “I saw this one dude with a mustache and full beard,” White said. “I thought they were going to come out, stomp on us, get on the bus and leave.” White rushed for 158 yards on 11 carries, including an 88-yard touchdown run. Crespi won, 23-6.

Those performances already have made Russell White’s name widely known in the college football community.

“We know about him, but he’s someone we’re going to look at more closely two years from now,” said Dick Lascola, who runs the Scouting Evaluation Assn. “As a sophomore, it could be beginner’s luck. I’m sure if you called up the University of Michigan and asked them if they’d heard of Russell White, they’d say, ‘No.’ ”

A call is made to Ann Arbor. Yo, ever heard of a sophomore named Russell White?

“From Crespi Carmelite High in the San Fernando Valley?” says a recruiting spokesman for Michigan.

The Wolverines have heard of him. So, too, have Washington, Iowa, Texas and Alabama, among other major college powers.

“Great football players are like wildfire,” said Artie Gigantino, assistant coach at USC. “Their names spread across the United States.”

At 5-11, 180 pounds, White exudes athleticism. He has muscular, sprinter’s legs and a sinewy upper body, one that strode to the Del-Rey League 100-meter championship last spring. He’s taller and thinner, but his facial features resemble those of Charles White, who helped San Fernando win back-to-back City championships in 1974 and ’75 before enrolling at USC along with teammates Kevin Williams and Kenny Moore.

“My last words to Charlie before he went into USC was to make sure he got his piece of paper when he got out,” said Helen White, who lives with Russell in an apartment in Lake View Terrace. “He didn’t graduate and he had some other problems later in his career. The only real impact he’s had on Russell is the learning Russell’s done from his mistakes.”

Helen, Charles White’s former sister-in-law, doesn’t mince words when discussing her only child. She wants him to get a college degree. She has seen too many talented athletes return to the Valley area without completing the necessary courses to graduate. She has gone back to school herself to pursue a degree in accounting.

“I don’t deal with Russell in a dream world,” said Helen, 34, who has raised Russell alone for the past 10 years. “This is real. This is life. A lot of parents don’t do that with their children. Once you put them off in a dream world it’s tough to get them back.”

Hanging on Bill Redell’s office wall inside the Crespi locker room are pictures of Marcus Dupree, who played for Redell when he was an assistant coach for the New Orleans Breakers of the United States Football League.

“Russell reminds me of Dupree in that they’re both fluid runners who never look like they’re going full speed--but no one ever catches them,” Redell said. “Dupree was heavily recruited out of high school and by the time Russell is a senior here, we may see a similar situation.”

White already has gone through a recruiting process of sorts, according to one report.

A 1985 article in Los Angeles Magazine said that several schools were actively pursuing White when he was playing Pop Warner football as an eighth-grader for the North Valley Golden Bears.

San Fernando seemed to have the inside track because of his family’s past connection to the school.

El Camino Real was a possibility because his mother was interested in having her son attend a high school that she believed would prepare him best for college. She said she read at the time that El Camino Real had a high academic rating.

Meanwhile, a newspaper report indicated that White had signed up for the magnet program at Cleveland.

So when White enrolled at Crespi last year, he surprised a few people and angered a few others.

“Everybody accused me of recruiting him, but I have never recruited a kid,” Redell said. “A lot of schools contacted him, but we didn’t. Kermit Alexander, who is a good friend of mine, just said he had a cousin who was a pretty good football player.”

Alexander, who attended Mount Carmel High in Los Angeles, suggested Crespi to Helen White because of his friendship with Redell and because the school was run by the same order of priests that had educated him.

Redell, Cleveland Coach Steve Landress and some other Valley-area coaches were at a clinic at Pierce College when Redell gave everyone the word that White had enrolled at Crespi.

“I felt just how someone must feel when they find out their wife is going out with someone else,” Landress said. “It’s like meeting the woman of your dreams and then someone takes her away. That’s the way it goes.

“Every time I read the paper I think, ‘Oh my gosh, that could have been another two touchdowns for us.’ ”

San Fernando Coach Tom Hernandez also was surprised. After all, Russell’s father and uncle had played running back for the Tigers.

“It was disappointing because when we have a good kid in our neighborhood, we hate to lose him,” Hernandez said. “Russell is a bright kid and he stays out of trouble. He’s a good athlete and a good student. If we had him here, we’d be 3-0.”

Without him, they’re 1-2.

Electricity travels through the crowd when White is on the field. Redell said he feels it, and so do the players.

“There’s always a chance that Russell is going to score,” Crespi quarterback Rob O’Byrne said. “When I call a running play for him, the offensive linemen’s eyes light up. Russell gets a little nervous, but that makes him run faster.”

Said tight end John Carpenter: “It’s almost like everyone knows that if they do their job, he can go all the way every time he carries the ball.”

White also has proved he can recover from from a slow start. Against Westminster last week, he was hit solidly on a number of plays and had been contained throughout most of the game. But with a little more than 10 minutes left, he broke loose off right tackle, bowled over two defenders and raced 88 yards for a touchdown.

“If I really dig deep and say, ‘I want to go on this play--I may go,’ ” White said. “I don’t care if I have the ball in the hand I’m supposed to carry it with, either. I’m going.”

The move up to the varsity did force White to abandon some of the tricks he used to get away with on the Pop Warner and freshman levels. One of his favorites took place on punt returns. He’d drop far back, letting the ball hit the ground and roll, waiting until the last possible second to pick it up. Then he would try to escape the tacklers by dancing all over the field.

Perhaps the most impressive play by White this season came on defense in the Celts’ win over Santa Barbara. The Crespi players knew he could take a hit, but they didn’t know whether he could hand one out as a defensive back.

That question was answered when a Santa Barbara receiver ventured into White’s territory and caught a pass. White plowed into the receiver at full speed and knocked the ear pad out of the receiver’s helmet.

“He doesn’t really have anything left to prove,” said fullback Jeff Kellogg, who helps open the holes for White. “He’s a valuable part of this team and everyone likes him. Sometimes we’ll just be sitting in the trainer’s room singing rap songs. He’s down to earth. He blends in real well.”

Things weren’t always as easy for White. During his freshman year, he experienced the academic problems that many first-year students go through in a college preparatory curriculum. He also missed his friends in San Fernando. And at the all-boys school, he missed having girls on campus.

“At the beginning of last year, he was pretty resistant to being at Crespi,” said Ed Marek, who was White’s counselor. “I don’t think he really wanted to be there even though the students accepted him.

“I remember a number of conversations when I asked him about it. He told me he was working as hard as he ever had in school and he still wasn’t getting the grades. I told him, ‘Look Russell, give it a year and if you don’t like it, you come to me and I’ll talk to your mother.’ I really thought that’s where it would end up.”

The low point of the year for White came when his mother pulled him out of the football program because he was getting behind in school. The incident occurred in the week leading up to a game against Alemany. Helen sat in the stands with Russell the day of the game and forced him to watch his teammates play without him.

“I recognized the problem and called the coach,” she said. “Sometimes you have to pull a kid back and say, ‘Hey, playing sports is a fringe benefit--it’s not the reason you’re going to school.’ ”

The low point became the turning point for White, who was playing for the freshman team.

Tutoring is available for all students at Crespi, but one woman in particular has helped a number of athletes learn to budget their time and improve their academic work.

Kathy Moskal, who taught Spanish and Italian at Crespi for five years before taking a job at Hart High this year, is the mother of Tony Moskal, Crespi’s freshman football coach. When Tony told his mother about his star tailback’s academic problems, she tried to help.

“Russell was a little shy at first, which wasn’t surprising,” said Kathy, who worked with White and another student every morning before school. “Most of my students don’t know how to take this crazy Italian lady.

“But he never came to me and said, ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today.’ When he started to become successful--all of a sudden--there was a glow. He tries to be nonchalant but you can see the excitement. Once he was able to achieve, he felt more at home.”

Things like figuring out the angle in a geometry problem have become as rewarding to White as thwarting a would-be tackler’s angle of pursuit on the football field.

“I have to get it done,” he said. “Football isn’t going to last forever.”

Last year’s problems have largely disappeared because of a strong support group and the determination of White the student.

“He didn’t know last year if he could cut it,” Marek said. “He knows he can now. He’s confident and his study habits have improved.

“He came from a different background in San Fernando. You walk out to the parking lot at Crespi and see Porsches and Mercedes. If you took another student and put him down at Crenshaw, I don’t think they would have done as well.”

Some people hope that White’s presence at Crespi will be felt beyond the football field. Currently, less than 10 blacks are enrolled at the predominantly white, upper-middle class Encino school, which has an enrollment of 630. As a star on the football team, White is a highly visible example of a minority student making the grade.

“I think he could have a dramatic impact on a lot of minority students,” Redell said. “A lot of parents are going to look at Crespi now. I think it would be great to have a higher minority mix than we presently have.”

Said senior linebacker Sean Howard, who like Lasley is the product of an interracial marriage: “I would like people to look at me, Russell and J.J. and say, ‘Hey, those kids made it through Crespi. Why can’t my kid?’ ”

Helen White had a similar thought.

“It was ironic because when I had Russell,” she said, “I always used to read about Crespi in the newspaper and I thought it would be great if my son had a chance to go to a school like that. My dream came true. He’s now in a position to make his dreams do the same.”

A month into his varsity career, Russell has simple dreams.

How does he want to be remembered after he leaves Crespi?

“I just want people to say, ‘He was Russell. He was chillin’.’ That’s it.”

The Word on Russell White

“His style of running looks a lot like Herschel Walker. He’s very strong and has good instincts. We had heard a lot about him before we played Crespi. I have a nephew who goes to school there. I’m afraid he didn’t tell me enough about Russell White. If he had we never would have played them.”

El Rancho High Coach Don Peterson

“When you put Russell White on the Crespi team, they go from good to great. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime player. You can play great defense 10 plays in a row and then he’ll bust one on you for 80 yards.”

Santa Clara Coach Steve Dann

“It’s 2 yards, 1 yard, 2 yards, 80 yards. Just like O.J. Simpson used to do. . . . He’s like a combination of Mickey Cureton and Issac Curtis. He has the strength of Cureton and the fluidity of Curtis.”

Westminster Co-Coach Jim O’Hara

“As a sophomore, it could be beginner’s luck.”

Dick Lascola, Scouting Evaluation Assn.

“We figured he’d come in and just be another back. We already had three of the best backs in the Valley. In the beginning, it was let’s see. There were some guys who were skeptical, but he answered the questions.

John Carpenter, Crespi tight end

‘I’ve had two major college coaches tell me he could start for their teams right now.’

Crespi Coach Bill Redell