They Were Slinging More Than Mud at the Canyon-Ridgecrest Game--Just Ask Harry Welch

With the opening kickoff still a few hours away, Canyon High Coach Harry Welch sat with a friend in the end zone at Burroughs High of Ridgecrest. As the flaming red sun eased behind the mountains, Welch idly picked up small clumps of dirt and tossed them in the general direction of Pahrump, Nev.

His Cowboys were cruising along unbeaten this season and were heavily favored to stomp on Burroughs later that evening. All seemed well with Welch. Right up until the moment that his friend advised him that those clumps of dirt he was clutching, fondling and tossing away were not clumps of dirt at all. Oh, they were clumps, all right. But not of dirt.

“Goat crap? Whaddya mean goat crap?” Welch suddenly shrieked, staring at his hands and shaking them wildly.

“Well, that’s something new,” Welch said a few moments later. “A lot of things are different up here. At Canyon, for example, I don’t believe we have much goat crap lying around the campus.”

Welcome to the Canyon-Burroughs rivalry.

Sometimes, like when it involves gifts from hairy little mammals, it’s a funny rivalry. At other times, like last year’s basketball game between the teams that turned into a violent and bloody brawl, it’s about as funny as bone graft surgery.

According to Welch, much of the problem is geographical. Nothing personal, but it seems Welch just doesn’t relish the idea of riding for four hours through the high desert in a crowded bus with his players in order to play these Burroughs Burros every other year, and then riding for four more hours after the game, winding through a region that includes towns such as Randsburg and Johannesburg and, lest we forget, the Greater Trona-Argus-Borosolvay Metropolitan Area.

“The CIF made this decision several years ago to send us up here to play football, and I think it’s just amazing,” Welch said. “Our school wants out of this game so badly, but petitioning the CIF for a change is like the Catholic church dealing with birth control. The CIF may take some action on our request in our lifetime. Maybe.”

But a long bus trip is not really the reason that Welch is about as fond of Burroughs of Ridgecrest as he is of pressing a hot steam iron against his nose. The actual reason for his unbridled dislike of the Burros is what he perceives to be an attitude problem on the part of the players and fans.

“The last time we were here we needed a police escort out of town,” Welch said. “That was a little scary. I think people in this town take exception to having outsiders coming in here and beating them. A police escort back to the highway is not my idea of a good time. And just today they told our booster club that they would not be allowed to stand in line to buy tickets, that they would board the bus and sell them tickets to keep them away from the Ridgecrest people. That’s certainly different, isn’t it?

“This isn’t a high crime-rate area, but these people up here are a bit different than what we’re used to. These people are more territorial, more provincial. They’re wary and untrusting of anyone they view as outsiders. And if you live up here, everyone is an outsider.”

Welch, standing on the sideline, said his team would not get caught up in the differences of the past between the schools and vowed that there would be no non-football violence this night.

“We won’t fight them, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “We will not fight. We will lose this game before we get in a brawl.”

As the word “brawl” cleared Welch’s lips, a brawl broke out in the junior varsity game between the two schools. Welch dashed into the fray and pulled players apart. Moments later, when officials had regained control of the game, Welch returned to the sideline.

“Let’s make that, ‘The varsity team will not get into a brawl tonight,’ ” Welch said.

At the other end of the field, standing watch at a security gate, was Verl Lillywhite. He is the athletic director at Burroughs. He was born in Inglewood and played football at USC and later for the San Francisco 49ers. He was a fullback and an outside linebacker.

Today, Lillywhite is 59. But mention the name Harry Welch to him and the outside linebacker in him comes roaring out.

“Those people have been crying about coming up here for years,” he said. “They don’t understand that we’re just too big for any schools around here. We’ve got 1,200 students and the schools around here have 200 or 300 or less. What do they want us to do?

“I think Harry Welch is his own worst enemy. He is one of those holier-than-thou guys and his teams can do no wrong. He seems to have an attitude problem. We get along fine with other schools from that area--Hart and Saugus and some others--but those Canyon football people are just plain arrogant, and Harry is the ringleader.”

And the beat goes on. In the first quarter of Friday night’s varsity game, the referee halted the game, and informed school officials that rocks were being thrown onto the field and if the rock-hurling did not cease, the game would be called off.