HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PREVIEWS : SUNSET : Spotlight Falls on Running Backs : Conover of Canoga Park, Addison of Chatsworth Head List

If a coach wants his team to contend for the Sunset League title this season, he’d better have an outstanding running back. Canoga Park and Chatsworth each have one man in mind to carry the ball, and those teams can be expected to be in the thick of the race. But don’t count out Taft, which has a tandem of runners, or Birmingham, which has a small, but scrappy ballcarrier.

Mike Conover, Canoga’s Park’s “Mr. Everything,” might be the best all-around athlete in the league. Last season as a junior, the 5-11, 175-pound running back led the team to a share of the league title.

He rushed for 934 yards (5.7 average) and caught 21 passes for 139 yards. He scored 98 points on 12 touchdowns, 14 extra points and 4 field goals. He also served as the team’s kickoff and punt returner.

Not surprisingly, Conover was named the league’s offensive player of the year.

“He can do it all,” Coach Rudy Lugo said. “He kicks off, returns kicks, punts, returns punts, kicks field goals and kicks PATs. He could also start at any spot in the secondary.

“About the only thing he can’t do is pass.”

That was Chatsworth’s Bryan Addison job in 1986. As a junior quarterback in the Chancellors’ run-oriented offense, Addison (6-0, 180) completed 48 of 97 (49.5%) passes for 650 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions.

But Addison was so effective as a runner, gaining 428 yards (4.7 average) and scoring five touchdowns, that Coach Myron Gibford has switched him to tailback this season to utilize his speed. Addison placed second in the City Section track championships in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles last spring.

“That’s where he can be most effective for us,” Gibford said. “The ball will be in his hands more as a running back. He’s very deceptive, he makes people miss him a lot with his quickness and his speed.”

Unlike Canoga Park or Chatsworth, which have one dominant running back, Taft will combine the talents of senior Terrence Britt (5-11, 190) and Kelvin Byrd (5-10, 165), a junior transfer from El Camino Real.

The Toreadors, who tied Canoga Park for the league title last season, rushed for more than 2,000 yards in 1986, and they might match that number again.

“They give us a very solid 1-2 punch,” Taft Coach Tom Stevenson said of Britt and Byrd. “They’re both fast--they’ve run 4.6 in the 40--and quick.”

Marcel Sellers of Birmingham is a tailback and a flanker who could help the Braves nose out either Canoga Park, Chatsworth or Taft for a playoff spot.

At 5-6, 145 pounds, Sellers is small but he made some big contributions in 1986. He rushed for 442 yards (8.0 average), caught 17 passes for 191 yards (11.2) and scored 6 touchdowns.

“He’s a very productive little football player,” Birmingham co-Coach Chick Epstein said. “He’s quick, he’s tough and he’s very smart. He rarely makes a mental mistake.”

Tom Richards, Birmingham’s other co-coach, says that Sellers could also be one of the top cornerbacks in the league.

Monroe could upset any of the top four teams if quarterback Kesa Harding, a 6-2, 170-pound senior plays to his ability.

“He’s improved a great deal,” Monroe co-Coach Howard Reisbord said of Harding, who played his first season at quarterback in 1986. “He can run and he can pass.”