Beverly Hills Comes Out Throwing : A 72-Yard Bomb Sends North Torrance to Cover, 21-0

Any questions as to whether Beverly Hills High School could come up with a passing attack to complement the fine running of Willie Crawford were answered Friday afternoon against North Torrance. And it didn’t take long.

On the first play of the Normans’ second drive of the day, quarterback Jason Goldberg and wide receiver Monroe Gorden , streaking down the left sideline, hooked up on a 72-yard scoring play for a 7-0 lead. That much proven, Goldberg threw only 10 more times, and Beverly Hills, The Times’ 13th-ranked team in the Southern Section, left it up to Crawford, who rushed for 88 yards and the other two touchdowns in a 21-0 Norman conquest at Beverly Hills.

Crawford, who rushed for 1,151 yards and 16 touchdowns last season while being named to the All-Southern Conference team as a linebacker, was not dominating in the first game of his senior season, with only three carries going for eight yards or more. But against a North Torrance team that finished 1-9 in 1986 and returned just four starters, he was good enough.

His best run was a 34-yarder for a touchdown with 1:38 left in the first half, a sweep around the right end that gave Beverly Hills a 14-0 lead with 1:38 left in the first half. He added a 2-yard scoring plunge to make it 21-0 with 6:43 remaining in the third quarter.

Goldberg, who started about half the games last season as the Normans compiled a 9-2-1 record to tie Santa Monica for the Ocean League title, completed 5 of 11 passes for 136 yards, with 2 interceptions. Gorden, a senior who did not play in 1986, had 2 catches for 85 yards. Tight end Brad Ammann caught 2 for 36 yards.

“I think it was very important,” Norman co-Coach Bill Stansbury said of the first quarter touchdown pass. “We’d been playing in a lot of passing league games and working on something just like that. That’s what we want to put back in the offense because we didn’t have it last year.”

Added Crawford, the league’s player of the year as a junior: “I don’t think they expected us to throw the ball as well as we did. I was almost a decoy, which was fine by me. We shut them out. That’s all that matters.”

For North Torrance Coach Don Bohannon, there were good signs even in defeat, particularly on defense, which played with an all-new secondary.

“For them to only get beat only once, that’s something to look at as a positive,” he said. “ . . . Our kids adjusted well and did some good things after that.

“I thought we shut them down pretty well. They got us on a couple of big plays, and a good team will do that to you.”

The Saxons of the Bay League were led by running back Anthony Anetema, returning after missing all but two games of his junior season with grade problems. He gained eight or more yards on six of his carries and looked good in finishing with 87 yards on 18 carries.

North Torrance’s best drive was its first, when it moved to a first down on the Beverly Hills 25. But from there, the Saxons went backwards to the 28 and, on fourth down, lost possession when Jim Henderson’s pass fell incomplete.

The ensuing drive by Beverly Hills was, by contrast, very short--just long enough for Goldberg and Gorden to get the Beverly Hills passing game in gear.