Coach Has El Toro Up With Best : After Perfect Record, Title, They’re Among Greats, Johnson Says

With the Southern Conference football championship trophy neatly tucked under his arm, El Toro High School Coach Bob Johnson was asked where his unbeaten Chargers rank among the great Orange County teams over the past 10 years.

The Chargers had just completed a perfect season with a convincing 26-10 win over defending champion Santa Ana before a capacity crowd in Orange Coast College’s LeBard Stadium. El Toro became the first county school to finish 14-0 since Edison accomplished the feat in 1980.

Surely El Toro ranked with El Modena’s back-to-back championship teams in 1983-84 or Servite’s Big Five champion teams in 1982-83. How about the Edison team that featured Kerwin Bell, Frank Seuer and Mark Boyer that finished 12-2 in 1979?

“This team deserves to be ranked with anyone you want to talk about,” Johnson said. “We can compare with those great teams at Servite and Edison. This was certainly our best team, and we’ve been ranked in the top five or six in the county over the past five years.”

El Toro, which won the Central Conference title under Johnson in 1982, shut out the county’s preseason top-ranked team, Westminster, 21-0, in the third week of the season and downed Capistrano Valley, 17-15, in its toughest game. But looking back, Johnson pointed to a season-opening 20-19 win over Whitehall of Allentown, Pa., as the turning point.

“We often referred to that game many times during the season,” he said. “It was a storybook trip for nine days and a storybook victory with two touchdowns in the last four minutes.

“The game and the trip brought the players together. A certain charisma was established that carried through the season. There was something about this team that was hard to put your finger on, a certain intangible, that separated it from the others.

“I thought tonight was a great way to cap the season. These were the two best teams in the county playing for what was essentially the county championship.”

Johnson, an expert at handicapping the horse races in the off-season, was finally asked what are the odds of a team finishing 14-0.

“Once in a lifetime,” he said. “I don’t know who will experience that again. I wouldn’t even want to calculate the odds.”

Santa Ana Coach Dick Hill is the only coach in the Southern Section to win football titles at three different schools. The veteran coach won championships at Downey, Santa Ana Valley and last year at Santa Ana, but he came close to missing Saturday night’s title game.

The 58-year-old Hill was admitted to Western Medical Center on Friday after he collapsed shortly before he was to begin teaching a typing class. He spent the night at the hospital.

“I felt dizzy, went to restroom and passed out,” he said. “My face hit the wall, and I look like I’ve been in a fight. Everything checked out fine; it was just a bout with the flu.

“It scared my wife and all concerned. The doctors cleared my health, and as long as the Lord provides me with health and ability to enjoy what I do, I’m perfectly willing to do it.”

El Toro scored its first touchdown against Santa Ana following a poor snap by the Saints’ sophomore center, Lance Tayco, that gave the Chargers a first down at Santa Ana’s seven-yard line. Johnson had predicted the Chargers would earn a turnover against Santa Ana’s special teams.

“We haven’t gone after punts or kicks all year, but I thought we’d get one tonight,” he said. “I told the players just before we left the locker room that we were going to get one.”