Orange County Prep Wednesday : Disappearing Act : Once, the Ampus Hero Wore a Sweater Covered With Letters From Different Sports, But . . . In This Age of Specialization, the Multisport Athlete is Fast Becoming Part of Prep Nostalgia

Somewhere in the future an obscure documentary called Athleticus Multisportius will probably turn up in a dusty, spider-webbed basement.

And some museum will probably send over a gang of critics who will screen the film, watch the same actor catch a touchdown pass, dunk a basketball, then hit a home run. They will proclaim it a fantasy, a marvel of pre-1988 special effects.

If professor Harry Edwards’ theory that sport is a mirror of society holds up, those critics just might be right.

“Sports always reflects society, and as society becomes more specialized, sports become more specialized,” said Edwards, who teaches sociology at the University of California. “It’s characteristic of almost every profession.”

Edwards’ point has been so well accepted over the years among his peers that it’s now about as profound as noting that grass grows out of the ground. These days, when general practice doctors have become neurosurgeons, mechanics have transformed into fuel-injector experts who don’t do crankshafts and even body boarders can shove aside Sports Illustrated for their own specialty magazine, it isn’t surprising that yesterday’s three-sport letterman now plays strictly defense for the his college team and enters the game only on passing downs. And that he started specializing in high school.

“I think specialization is the name of the game in the country, in college sports, in everything we do,” said Vince Dooley, Georgia football coach. “I think high schools are following that trend. In one way that’s too bad as far as high school athletics is concerned. In my generation, you just went from one sport to the next.”

High school athletes used to be more flexible. Burt Call, a former quarterback, point guard and center fielder at Capistrano Valley High School, played in three practice games in three different sports in the space of five hours one day in 1983.

Only last spring, Tommy Adams, then a junior at Capistrano Valley, participated in two sports in the same season. He would sprint in a track meet one day and play baseball the next. Athletes such as Adams, though, seem rapidly becoming part of high school nostalgia.

Tom White, Capistrano Valley track coach, said, “The history books are full of examples of three-sport athletes. But not the recent history books.”

Brian Mayfield, a Big Spring, Tex. athlete, decided to specialize in basketball even though he made the 4-A all-state team as a defensive back and a punter. In Orange County, Saddleback’s Craig Marshall abandoned football to concentrate in basketball.

Thomas Byrnes, California Interscholastic Federation commissioner, says that while he hasn’t seen any studies, he is noticing fewer three-sport athletes these days at the state’s larger schools--which isn’t surprising. As high school sports get more competitive, coaches run year-round programs and parents see specialization as being synonymous with scholarships.

“Coaches put pressure on kids to make decisions,” said Mike Gillespie, USC baseball coach. “Kids are made to feel if they don’t make the decision, they will not make it with a particular sport, especially those (with seasons) back-to-back. The combination football/basketball player is one you see less and less.”

At Pacifica High, Derek Hickman says he trains all year in football because the competition is so intense. That’s especially true for a defensive lineman who stands only 5-foot 9-inches and weighs 207 pounds. By comparison, Esperanza High School’s offensive line averages 242 pounds from tackle to tackle.

“The guys I play against, some of them are 6-3 and weigh 10 pounds or more than I do,” Hickman said. “They pretty much scare me. I have to be strong to go against them.”

Hickman said he started lifting weights in eighth grade and was one of the strongest kids in ninth grade because he began training before everyone else. But he continues training year-round, even though he has bench pressed 340 pounds and done squats with 465.

“This way I can compensate,” he said. “If I stopped, I would also lose my mental edge.”

Sometimes, starters must train all year just to keep ahead of their understudies. That’s especially true at larger schools, where sheer numbers mean better competition. Soon, the understudies begin to specialize as well.

Gary McKnight, Mater Dei basketball coach, said, “I think guys look around and say, ‘Hey, I’m losing my edge because I’m having to compete against kids who play just one sport.’ ”

Chris Patton, who once played baseball and basketball at Mater Dei and now plays for Chapman College, decided to specialize in basketball so he could be a starter.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I wanted to start really bad. I wanted to make sure.”

Other athletes are pressured by coaches to specialize. Marginal players are told they must work year-round if they are to make the team. Some coaches demand an athlete play only one sport.

“I think there is a tendency for us coaches, if we only coach one sport, that it is the sport,” said Stan Clark, Westminster athletic director. “As coaches, we put demands on teams to be competitive. In football, we ask them to lift weights year-round. We have passers and receivers throwing the ball all spring, all summer, all fall. There was a time when I first moved to California that it was illegal to do those things. So many people were doing it anyway, they corrected it by making it legal.”

Oscar Ravelo, an athlete at Pacifica, said the new coach of the club soccer team he’d been part of for four years, demanded he play only that sport.

“We got a new coach and he wanted a commitment just to play soccer,” Ravelo said. “I couldn’t give him that commitment so I kind of quit and kind of got kicked off.”

Pressure also comes from home. Many parents want their children to specialize in, say, football in hopes of receiving one of the 25,000 athletic scholarships awarded each year. Those are long odds when 986,000 play varsity football.

Eddie Joseph, an official of the Texas High School Coaches Assn., says he is aware of a parent who held his kid back in junior high a year to increase his chances for a scholarship.

“The interest of a coach to specialize is much less than for a parent, especially if there are large financial rewards in the future,” noted Carey McDonald, executive director of the National High School Athletic Coaches Assn. “From the time the kid is small, they want him to be a pro. The die is cast many times before the coach even gets the kid, particularly in large schools or urban ones.”

Some athletes decide to specialize on their own. Lacking the price of tuition and stellar grades, they see sports as a road into college.

“It’s so competitive now that guys are specializing to get the scholarship they want,” says Santa Ana High’s George Tuioti, who plays football and basketball. “Most guys are just sticking to one sport and hoping to get a full ride out of it.”

Mark Craig, who played football at Cal State Long Beach, was successful at that.

“I knew my chances to become a collegiate athlete were in football,” said Craig, who had also played basketball and baseball. “I knew it would take total concentration on football to be the athlete I wanted to be. I pretty much knew at the end of my junior year that football was going to be it.”

Looking back, Craig said he has no regrets about having specialized. In fact, he says, one Long Beach coach liked the idea because the off time would give Craig an opportunity to build up his speed.

As one of the county’s most highly recruited athletes, Santa Ana senior Bobby Joyce is an example of an athlete so gifted he can transcend specialization and easily excel at two or more sports.

However, Joyce says, some college recruiters want him to specialize in basketball rather than take the chance of getting injured in football.

“When they heard I wanted to play football again, a lot of colleges turned off on me,” Joyce said. “I had a lot of them writing me, calling me up every night . . . that stopped.

“A lot of college scouts told me, ‘Thank God, I’m God-gifted.’ They told me if I get hurt, no matter what, I’ll be able to go to their college because they really want me bad.”

Though specialization seems on the increase, some Orange County coaches look at the trend with blazing eyes. They say that specialization robs a young athlete of learning experiences, and that is what high school is all about. Clark at Westminster all but insists that his football players try other sports in the spring.

Meanwhile, Jerry Witte, Saddleback High athletic director and football coach, has declared total war on specialization. Beginning this fall, an athlete in sixth-period athletics will not be able to take the class again in the spring unless he participates in a spring sport.

“These kids are too young to specialize,” Witte said. “There’s no reason for it. We’re supposed to be an educational institution and when we’re not trying to get the kid to do and experience new things, we’re doing him a disservice.”

Sociologist Edwards will go along with that. He thinks the more specialized an athlete becomes, the more he limits himself and the more he’s at risk if he happens to suffer an injury or compete for a scholarship in a year when there happens to be a bumper crop of players at his position.

“Not only is he putting all of his eggs in one basket, all of the eggs are of one type,” Edwards said. “If one egg is vulnerable, they’re all vulnerable.”