The Good Hands People : Receivers Provide Insurance for Playoff Teams With Good Quarterbacks

According to headlines this season, Valley-area quarterbacks have led their teams to victory after victory.

But that’s only half right.

Save some space for their receivers. They are as valuable as phosphorus to a match. Because of them, quarterbacks Ken Sollom, Jim Bonds, Jeff Barrett, Jeremy Leach and Darren Del’Andrae all have passed for more than 1,000 yards--and are playing in playoff games tonight.

None has a secret, really. Just great hands. Or speed to go long. Power to keep running. Guts to get back up.

Chad Zeigler at Canyon is a battler; he overcame an injury that threatened to end his career.

Chris Hite, Hart’s tailback, has speed. He’s the best at running after catching the ball.

Granada Hills’ Sean Brown is a big tight end. He runs over defenders, not past them.

Calabasas’ Tony Sirkin has a football savvy that compensates for his lack of size and speed.

Brian Kaloustian and Pat Lynch at Burroughs are better as a pair than either would be alone.

They all work like dogs to be golden receivers.

This is pain. This is excruciating, horrifying pain. The kind, Chad Zeigler said, that makes you “throw up when nothing comes out.”

He lies on the football field, not wanting to move--as if he can’t move his 5-11, 180-pound body.

“I’m scared. I’m wondering if I want to play again,” he said.

Then everything is blank.

This is Oct. 3, the fourth game of the season. The opponent: Notre Dame. Zeigler, trying to make a block, has just rammed his head into a tackler’s thigh pad.

Something went wrong.

“I guess I didn’t have any air in my helmet,” said Zeigler, who had suffered a concussion during a summer practice. “I thought it was over.”

It wasn’t, of course. Zeigler overcame the hurt from the block itself and, just as important, the anguish from the mental block that followed.

Three games later, he was doing what made him All-Golden League as a junior the previous year.

He has caught 40 passes for 823 yards and 15 touchdowns this season.

“He had a game or two where he was off,” Canyon Coach Harry Welch said. “I think it did scare him. But he’s comfortable now, knowing his body is OK.”

Getting back the timing was no problem. Sollom is Zeigler’s cousin. The two have played together since they were 8.

“I could play other sports, but I love football,” said Zeigler, who probably will play next season at a junior college instead of a major college because of what he called”bad” study habits. “I love to make the big catch.”

Chris Hite reminds you of a lightning bug on a football field. Now you see him, now you don’t.

Just 5-9, 160 pounds, he runs 40 yards in 4.5 seconds. But it’s not just his speed that impresses coaches. It’s his gifts of quickness, his acceleration, his instincts.

“The key that makes him a good receiver is that he has the speed to go deep, the intestinal fortitude to go over the middle and the knowledge to read coverage and adjust routes,” Hart Coach Rick Scott said. “He’s the best. He’s got about as great a pair of feet as anybody I’ve coached.

“He is magic when he catches the football.”

And he catches it often.

Hite has rushed only 80 times for 624 yards and two touchdowns.

“If I had my choice,” Hite said, “I’d take the pitchout and run on every play.”

But the play of choice--forced to an extent by the early season injury to tight end David Lee--is to throw to Hite out of the backfield on short outs. That’s produced more than Scott, Bonds or Hite imagined.

In 12 games, Hite has caught a Valley-leading 78 passes for 1,003 yards and 16 touchdowns. His two-season total is 139 catches for 1,772 yards. All are school records.

“I love to run the ball more than any receiver,” Hite said.

In basketball, he’s a power forward. In baseball, he’s a power hitter. In football, he’s a power receiver, a tight end.

“I guess that has a lot to do with my size,” said Sean Brown, who is 6-2 1/2 and 200 pounds, yet speaks as softly as any shy 16-year-old.

His size is fitting for football, but Brown is only in his second season.

“I always wanted to play,” he said, “but my mom didn’t want me to until my dad finally talked her into it. She worries about me a lot. She thought I might get hurt. She didn’t think I could handle it.”

Mom was wrong.

Brown has caught 32 passes for 420 yards and five touchdowns. The figures become more impressive when you consider that teammate Khalid Ali has rushed for more than 1,200 yards.

“He has as fine a pair of hands as I’ve worked with,” Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh said. “It’s a learning process for him. But he’s just an outstanding athlete. He grows every day.”

Yet football is not his passion.

“My goal is to be a professional baseball player,” said Brown. “Football is something to do to keep me out of the streets.”

Judging from the number of letters from college recruiters, it is something he can do to help major college football teams win.

“I’m not the type to go around bragging, but I’m doing pretty good,” he said. “I’ve still got a ways to go. The catching is no problem. I need to learn to sustain a block more.

“When I first started playing, it felt kind of funny. It was a lot tougher, a lot more running than baseball. But I wasn’t going to give up. I’m not a quitter.

“Now I can handle it.”

Tony Sirkin wrote a few things about himself on a card for reporters.

Nickname: “Hands.”

Career goal: “Play football . . . as a receiver.”

College preference: “Any passing school.”

Heroes: “Steve Largent.”

Hobbies: “Playing catch with a football.”

But his reply to the question, “Personal motto?” reveals more than anything else the way he approaches the game: “If I can’t do it, nobody can.”

He’s no longer the only one to hold that opinion. Sirkin spent last season trying to convince Calabasas Coach Larry Edwards to let him play receiver. It didn’t work. He had to play defensive back.

Sirkin is 5-10, 170--”when he’s soaking wet,” Edwards said. He’s slow, has few moves and probably couldn’t slug his way out of an alley fight. He’s a nice kid.

But send him on a pass route, and he believes he will make the catch. Every time.

“I can do it, man. I compensate by doing other things like jumping high, concentrating. I work hard. I was a workaholic this summer,” he said.

The workaholism has worked. Sirkin has 44 catches for 776 yards and seven touchdowns. Against Carpinteria, he caught 14 passes for 210 yards, a school record.

“He’s our clutch receiver,” Edwards said. “He does do some things that seem unbelievable, which is testimony to his confidence.”

Bob Dunivant, a career student of the pass as coach at Burroughs, has coached plenty of good receivers.

This season, he’s coaching the best pair.

Brian Kaloustian, 5-8, 155, is “like a rabbit jumping and running all over the field,” the coach said. He jukes, fakes, then runs by you for long gains. He’s caught 44 passes for 1,026 yards and eight touchdowns.

Pat Lynch, 5-10, 170, has “soft hands, the best pair this year,” the coach said. He runs to the sidelines and across the middle, always grabbing the ball out of the air. He’s caught 49 passes for 840 yards and seven touchdowns.

“They complement each other,” Dunivant said. “Neither has great speed. But they catch everything thrown to them. You can’t overload on one side. They serve kind of a dual function. They’re out there making catches or they’re occupying four people.

“Teams double-double cover us.”

But it hasn’t been effective.

“They can’t key on anybody,” said Kaloustian, who set single-game school records for most yards (249) and receptions (eight) against Alhambra. “If they want to put the best on one of us, they usually pay for it.

“Pat likes to jump in the air and make aerial catches. He makes the nice catches. When I catch the ball, I make it a nice run.” THE RECEIVING LINE

Player, School No Yards Avg Lg TD Chris Hite, Hart 78 1,003 12.9 95 16 Pat Lynch, Burroughs 49 840 17.1 61 7 Brian Kaloustian, Burroughs 44 1,026 23.3 66 8 Tony Sirkin, Calabasas 44 776 17.6 46 7 Chad Zeigler, Canyon 40 823 20.6 48 15 Sean Brown, Granada Hills 32 450 14.1 68 5