ORANGE COUNTY PREP FOOTBALL : Foothill Beats Tustin, 14-0, and Gets Revenge for Last Season’s Loss

There was a celebration, to be sure, but not quite on the order of the pandemonium that erupted after the Foothill-Tustin game last year.

This time, there was shouting and such, but then things settled down. After all, the way Foothill High School and its fans saw it, the Knights’ 14-0 victory Thursday night over rival Tustin simply served to restore the natural order of things.

Foothill had won this game for 14 straight years before last season, when Tustin beat the Knights for the first time since 1972. This season, Tustin was--for a change--the favored team.

But as tends to happen in rivalries, that didn’t much matter.

“They handled us,” said Marijon Ancich, Tustin coach, whose team dropped to 2-2. “They came to play, and we did not rise to the occasion.”

Foothill, using a steady, ball-control offense, took a 7-0 lead by halftime on a one-yard plunge by Mike Horton, and then took up all but 2 1/2 minutes of the third quarter with a touchdown drive that ended with Johnny Mountain scoring on a one-yard run. It proved to be enough to give the Knights a victory in front of a crowd of about 4,000 at Northrup Field.

Foothill’s first touchdown drive was keyed by Mountain’s 37-yard run to the Tustin 1-yard line. Horton scored on the next play.

The second touchdown came on a 19-play drive to open the second half, keyed again by a Mountain run, this one a 21-yarder that gave the Knights a first-and-goal. Mountain’s ensuing running leap gave him his fifth touchdown of the year.

“We had to work very hard for it,” said Jerry Howell, Foothill’s first-year head coach. “We had to play just about a perfect game for it.”

Foothill (3-1) did it with an offense that had few surprises. Quarterback Tom Hawkins attempted but four passes, completing only one. Other than that, he mostly pitched or handed off to Mountain, the 6-foot 2-inch, 200-pound tailback who last week rushed for a school-record 248 yards in a victory over Marina. Mountain gained substantially less ground this week--151 yards on 31 carries--but it sufficed. When Mountain didn’t carry, it was either Horton, the fullback, or Hawkins himself, whose effective fakes helped create opportunities.

“We thought we could control the ball on the ground,” Howell said.

That two touchdowns was enough to win this game was something of a surprise. Tustin quarterback George Menges had completed more than 60% of his passes in the season’s first three games, but Thursday he completed only 4 of 17.

“George just had one of those kind of nights he’d like to forget about,” Ancich said.

If the game wasn’t wrapped up before the fourth quarter, it was after Tustin’s final attempt at a drive, when Menges threw four consecutive incompletions.

“It wasn’t fun, but I don’t think it’s going to affect our season,” Ancich said.

Now, with the main event on the football schedule of the city of Tustin past, Howell figures he can stand to pull for Tustin.

“We’re rooting for them to win the Sea View League now,” he said. “We want the city to have two champions.”