Officials Halt Proposal for Crespi Game With Carson

For the first time in years, talk of matching the high school football champions of the Big Five Conference and the City 4-A division went beyond whispers in the locker room.

As late as Dec. 4, the possibility of a showdown was alive. Gene Vollnogle, coach of Carson, the City 4-A champion, said a game was tentatively set for this Saturday at 1 p.m. at Anaheim Stadium. It would have matched Crespi, which eventually won the Big Five Conference championship--or unbeaten Southern Conference champion El Toro--against Carson. On Friday, Carson upset Banning, which had been ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today.

Crespi Coach Bill Redell said that he first heard of the possibility after his team defeated Eisenhower in a semifinal two weeks ago.

“I told my players about it,” he said. “They were all for it. They would have liked to play the game. But that was the first and last I heard about it.”

That’s because the executive committee of the Southern Section, which governs the Big Five and Southern conferences, shot down the idea at its meeting on Dec. 4, ending plans for the game.

“It was a strongly discussed issue,” Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas said. “The committee reviewed it and decided that it was not in our best interest to play any game after our Southern Section championships. They felt it was somewhat anticlimactic and that the Southern Section championship is supposed to be the ultimate championship.”

Those involved said that the length of the Southern Section champion’s season was an issue. Southern Section champions play 10 regular-season games and four playoff games. The City 4-A champion plays only nine regular-season games and three playoff games.

Many states, such as Texas, have state championship tournaments, which require their teams to play as many as 16 games.

“It’s an old issue that periodically comes up,” Bill Clark, administrator of Southern Section football, said of a Big Five-City 4-A match-up. “Historically, the Southern Section hasn’t shown interest in a game like that. It tends to lengthen the season, and we’re already overlapping basketball.”

This whole idea started on the City Section’s side.

“One of our board members said he was interested in pursuing it,” City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness said. “We turned it over to the Southern Section. There was no decision yet made on our part and I don’t even want to speculate as to what our decision would have been. The date of Dec. 20 was only a suggested date. None of it ever got farther than the exploratory stage.”

This wasn’t the first time that a showdown between the best teams from the Southern and City sections has been proposed. But, according to Harkness, it may be the last for a while.

“This was a most unusual circumstance,” he said. “USA Today ranking Banning No. 1 in the nation added some stimulation to the concept that had never been there before. It just didn’t come off and I’m not certain that it will ever come off in the foreseeable future.”

Vollnogle, who along with Banning Coach Chris Ferragamo has been lobbying for the showdown for several years, is frustrated by the latest setback.

“This has happened several times and the City has been willing and the CIF has not,” said Vollnogle, who just finished his 34th season as a coach in the City Section. “This time, though, it went as far as it’s ever gone. When the CIF was real strong and the City was weak I could see why they wouldn’t want to. They had more to lose. But now the City has gotten stronger and the shoe hasn’t gone to the other foot.”

Harkness says he can understand the Southern Section’s point of view.

“There have been many failed attempts at scheduling this game over the years,” he said, “but you have to understand that the people who make these kinds of decisions are educators first and sports people second. Their concern is on the educational side of the environment.”

Although the proposed contest has been shot down once again, Vollnogle says he will be ready and waiting if the two sections finally decide to stage the event.

“If you called me tomorrow and told me that the game was on Friday, we’d be there,” he said.