MEAN STREAK : As If by Birthright, Carpinteria Has Beaten Moorpark in Football 47 Consecutive Times

In 1965, the inhabitants of Moorpark, known as “bean farmers” over in Carpinteria, were wondering when their high school football team would ever beat Carp again. The Musketeers had lost an embarrassing 24 in a row to their rivals from Santa Barbara County. Carp fans never were shy about rubbing it in, either, and lemons from nearby orchards were often splattered against the visiting team’s bus after yet another Carp win.

The mounting string of losses was made even more intolerable for Moorpark because Carpinteria was good in many departments--and knew it. An oceanside paradise with the “world’s safest beach,” Carp was only a scant 10 miles from the Santa Barbara social scene. In the summer, a light breeze would blow sophistication down the coast. Moorpark, on the other hand, was 20 miles from the waves, a plain-looking Ventura County backwater landlocked by mountains and cut off from the cultural influences of Los Angeles.

As that year’s game approached, Moorpark players were confident that the streak would not last. “And we knew we were the team that would end it,” said Roy Talley, class of ’66. “Nobody thought it would go on. But Carp did it again,” beating Moorpark, 20-0.

Going into last Friday night’s game at Moorpark Stadium, local fans were still wondering when their team would ever beat Carp. Nobody, not even the most fanatic Warrior fan, could have dreamed that the streak would have gone on, and on, and on. By this year, the Warriors had stretched the 24 games to 46, a record of dominance believed to be unmatched in high school football. “We used to schedule Moorpark on homecoming because it was a sure win,” said Marty Macias, owner of a barbershop on Carpinteria Avenue, the main drag. “We really have their number.”

The Warriors’ mastery of Moorpark in football has done nothing to cure Carp’s superiority complex. If anything, the games have only served to reinforce and perpetuate the perceptions. Poor Moorpark. Lucky Carp. “I don’t know anything about football,” said Janet Aresco, a restaurant hostess in Carpinteria, “but I’ve heard about the Moorpark streak. It’s been going on for a long time.”

Back in 1928, a winding two-lane blacktop connected the towns. Football was just starting up on the high school level, but towns with teams were few and far between. So even though they were 40 miles apart, Moorpark would travel to Carp for the third game of the season. It was primitive football, but it was pure. Small towns. Community involvement. School spirit. Moorpark won, 12-7, then won again the next year. But it wasn’t the start of a dynasty.

Carp hasn’t lost to Moorpark since 1934. There are elderly people in both towns who have not been living long enough to remember a Moorpark win. This does not boost morale in Moorpark. “There’s a psychological barrier,” Athletic Director Ross Callaway said. Shop owner Joy Cummings is “sick and tired of hearing about it.” The legacy of defeat is passed from generation to generation. Losing to Carp is in the genes. Said Talley: “These days we hope to win but we don’t expect to.”

Lucky Carp. The same legacy provides the Warriors with an aura of invincibility. “They always seemed to be a major force that swept in and just overpowered us,” said Linda Plaks, whose husband, Harvey, used to be president of the Moorpark Booster Club. “I always felt that Carp had bigger players, better-looking uniforms, more money to support the team. Even the cheerleaders were excellent.” Linda’s daughter had been a Moorpark cheerleader, no easy task. “She had to keep everybody up even though you knew we were doomed,” Linda said.

Another element heavily affecting the psyches of Moorpark fans has been their team’s generosity toward other schools. In the late ‘70s, the Musketeers managed to put together 46 losses in a row. Community pride was taking a beating not only in Carpinteria but in places like Fillmore and Santa Ynez. Something had to be done. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that with populations about equal, Carp had something Moorpark lacked--which had nothing to do with geography.

What Carp had was a football program. A few years ago, the Moorpark town fathers decided to get one for themselves.

Life was changing in Moorpark. No longer a sleepy farming community, it was becoming a boom town, more than doubling in size to 16,000 since 1980 (Carp is 11,000 and holding steady). The 118 and 23 freeways, both dead-ending in Moorpark, have brought Los Angeles over the hill. Civilization has arrived. Brand new Spanish-looking subdivisions displace lemon groves and bean fields. Brand new storefronts disguise old buildings on High Street. Next year, a brand new high school opens its doors.

And the brand new citizens don’t want to be known as bean farmers. So the high school football team has been ordered to win. Which means it will have a football program. “We’re on the right track now,” said Moorpark High Principal Cary Dritz, a boyish-looking 35. Dritz is part of a new administration that includes football Coach Bob Noel, whose responsibility is to create the football program. His problem, however, is that a football program is built on continuity and tradition, things the Musketeers have never had, unless you consider losing a tradition.

So Noel, in his fourth year, has begun to add tradition to his program. “Rituals,” is what Callaway calls them. On game days, for instance, cheerleaders wear their uniforms to school and the players show up in dress clothes instead of blue jeans. At 3:30, the players gather in the cafeteria for pregame lasagna, then walk en masse across campus and watch game films or maybe even “Rocky.” In the summer there’s football camp, also called “hell week” by the players, and passing leagues. During the season, weight training is mandatory for the first time and players get to spend sixth period together.

It is obvious that football has become serious business at Moorpark. Further proof is Noel’s orders to the cheerleaders to be quiet on the team bus. “The coach wants the players to think about football, not girls,” senior cheerleader Shannyn Riley said.

But before Noel can change the fortunes of his team, he has to revamp the Moorpark image. And the best way to accomplish that, he realizes, is to beat Carp. Every year, pumping up the town is never difficult. Like Talley’s teams in the ‘60s, Moorpark always thinks it has a shot at winning. But inevitably, there’s another loss. It was almost as though Carp put a hex on sports bromides like “on any given Sunday” and “lucky breaks” or “catching them on a bad day.”

“There’s something about them, like a mystique,” said Ben Gutierrez, a quarterback on the ’86 team that lost to Carp, 46-0.

Before Friday night’s game, Moorpark had been worked into a frenzy of optimism and vengeance. Even newcomers to the school had been taught the painful history. “It seems like the awareness of this tradition has remained even though we’ve had this growth in the community,” the affable Callaway said. “You’d think with the passage of time, it would be let go of.” But everybody, including teachers, was holding on.

“I told my kids in class, ‘It’s time to change, and today’s the day,’ ” said Ana Maria Menendez, a Spanish teacher who helps the junior class sell burgers at football games.

As if Noel didn’t have enough incentive, he found even more than usual this year: the last chance to win the game at old Moorpark High, which was built in 1919. Cheerleaders were euphoric about the prospect. “We want to go out with a bang,” cheerleader captain Karen Dinsmore said. “We want to do it in style.”

Noel even had his pregame speech written for him. A story in the Simi Valley Enterprise had, the coaches felt, put Moorpark down. “Our local paper,” said assistant Mario Porto, “and it says all Carp has to do is bring their band.” Noel was going to read the offending lines to his players in hopes they would be sufficiently angry to beat Carp. “That story should get ‘em excited,” he said.

Almost due west in Carpinteria, a win over Moorpark has become as automatic as the daily arrival of the Southern Pacific. During the streak, the Musketeers were able to lose by less than a touchdown only twice--in 1977 (20-14) and 1984 (14-10). Most games were blowouts. In one memorable four-game stretch from 1978-81, the Warriors won by a combined score of 194-0. Moorpark appears frequently in the Carp record book: most team interceptions (6 vs. Moorpark, ‘53); longest kickoff return (95 yards vs. Moorpark, Ray Goena, ‘47).

It comes as small consolation to Moorpark that other teams also have helped raise Carp’s self-esteem. The Warriors have been a small-school powerhouse for more than 40 years, once winning 11 straight Tri-Valley League titles and 60 consecutive league games, a Southern Section record. Carp won its first championship in 1930 in what was then called the Ventura Minor League. An old yearbook, the Chismahoo, recounts the climactic play that gave the Warriors the title: “The trusty fullback smashed through the center of the line for the extra point.”

The trusty fullback, Marcus Cravens, is now a chipper 75, many pounds over his playing weight of 170. Sitting in his 100-year-old frame house in the heart of town, he thumbed through his brittle copy of the Chismahoo. His teen-age years flashed before him. There he was in leather helmet and thick wool sweater--both now under glass in the high school library. There was Rowena, girls varsity basketball player and his future wife. In the background of many photos, acres of empty fields stretched for miles. Dirt clods were on the playing field.

“I remember when I could get up before dawn, shoot a buck, get it back and have it dressed and get to Santa Barbara before 8,” said Cravens, a silver-haired retired state agricultural commissioner. “Things have changed around here. But one thing has stayed the same. Carp always beats Moorpark. You know, Moorpark always had pretty tough kids--whenever you get a bunch of farmer boys, they’re usually pretty rugged. But it takes more than guts to win a football game.”

Cravens played on the first Carp team in ‘28, when 17 of the school’s 44 boys turned out for football. “You couldn’t not play, because we didn’t have enough people,” he said. In his senior year, he was captain of the football team and president of the student body. By then, Moorpark had won both games against Carp, “apparently putting things together better than we did,” Cravens said. Carp’s 31-6 win in 1930 kept Cravens from being immortalized as a Warrior who never beat Moorpark.

Like a lot of townspeople, Rowena and Marcus Cravens attend a lot of football games, home and away. There have been many theories for Carp’s success. While Moorpark’s Joy Cummings reasoned, “The kids there get to run on the beach,” Cravens attributed it to “the backing this town gives the football team.” There’s no doubt football is a big deal in Carp. “It’s the hub of this town,” said Lynda Callos, who owns a speciality shop on Linden Avenue.

Memorial Field was built by local tradesmen after World War II. The Palms, a hotel at the turn of the century and now a popular restaurant featuring $5.95 steaks, invites the players for dinner once a year. Marty Macias is in the American Legion color guard at all home games. On Saturday mornings after games, Lou Panizzon, the Carp coach since ‘75, shows up before 8 at Macias’ Valley Barbers, drinks coffee and holds a chalk talk with a half-dozen regulars. Continuity and tradition.

Panizzon, a quarterback on the 1958 team, is known for organization and discipline. A year ago, he kicked his star player off the team right before a playoff game. “If a boy breaks the rules, boom, he’s out,” Cravens said approvingly.

This year’s team was heading for Moorpark with a No. 1 ranking in the Inland Conference and a 4-0 record, compared with 1-3 for the Musketeers. The week before, the Warriors had beaten previously unbeaten Oak Park, 48-0, “but the game wasn’t even that close,” wrote Dennis Liff in the Carpinteria Herald.

The day before the Moorpark game, Panizzon, wearing a white golf hat with the brim pulled down, stood on the practice field and talked about the rivalry. Despite Carp’s success, his players don’t take victory for granted. “We never take the game lightly,” he said. “Nobody wants to be on a team that loses to Moorpark. We tell them that Moorpark players have a lot of incentive. They all want to be on a team that beats Carp.”

Fullback John Zanini understood the historical importance of the game. “The town expects us to win,” he said. “We don’t want to let them down.”

But nobody in Carp was expecting to be disappointed. “The streak will continue, oh, yes,” Cravens said. Macias didn’t “see any competition Friday night.” Carla Anderson, a cheerleader whose father owns the Palms, was asked how she would inspire her counterparts in Moorpark. “Go out there in genie costumes and wish for a win,” she said, adding thoughtfully, “Is that too mean?”

Despite Carp’s confidence in what has become its birthright, Moorpark players and fans, as always, had a good feeling about the game. “We’re like the little choo-choo that could,” Callaway said. “We think we can, we think we can . . . “ Noel felt that “the pressure of the streak weighs more heavily on them. They’d hate to be the kids who lose.”

On Friday night, families arrived with blankets and picnic baskets and claimed sections of the cold concrete bleachers on the Moorpark side. In the distance, the new subdivisions could be seen atop hillsides. An Amtrak express whistled by and the P.A. announcer informed the crowd of about 3,000 that it “looks like the 6:15 to L. A. is 13 minutes late on track three.” Ana Maria Menendez was handling the cash at the hamburger stand and “praying for the team.” Men in green satin booster club jackets sold programs. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Dept. sent a couple of officers to keep the peace.

Across the field, more than 200 Carp fans, a sea of red, jammed into two small bleachers. Huddled together were the Cravens, munching on apples. Panizzon was putting the linebackers through a warm-up drill. “I’m not worried about the streak,” he said on the sideline. “It’s got to end sometime. I’ll still wake up the next morning.”

Lloyd Thomas, Moorpark’s best halfback, was nursing a bruised ankle and would not play on offense, reminding fans of the 1984 game when star fullback Oscar Love, sub-par because of a bad toe, couldn’t produce during a key fourth-quarter drive in Moorpark’s 14-10 loss. But Thomas could still play defense, and he had a premonition.

“The streak will end tonight,” he yelled right before the game.

Until late in the first half, it seemed that Thomas was on the money. The Moorpark defense had yielded only six points, keeping the team in the game. But on second and goal from the four with seven seconds left in the half, Carp quarterback Coley Candaele hit wide receiver Shad Lara with a pass over the middle. After the two-point conversation, Carp had a 14-0 lead, and Moorpark was a beaten team.

Still, there was concern among Carp fans. “I’m scared,” Carla Anderson said. “We usually score right away.” Cravens was appreciating the struggle. “It’s more competitive than usual,” he said. “Which makes it a better game to watch. But I’m not worried.”

By the fourth quarter, it was obvious to everybody that the winning streak would endure at least for another year. Despite the urging of Moorpark cheerleaders to “fight-fight-fight!” Carp was winning, 28-0, and trying for more. Kneeling on the sideline, Callaway could not tolerate what he perceived as a lack of sportsmanship. “I don’t know,” he said with an arched brow. “Is that what they call running up the score? Lou, baby, one of these days, it’ll be your turn.”

When the game ended in a 42-0 victory for the Warriors, Moorpark fans moped home. The win boosted Carp’s overall record against Moorpark to 50-3, including 27 shutouts and a cumulative 1,568-233 point differential. The streak had reached 47 and Carp backers celebrated on the field. But one of them, Ernie Johnson, left with a sense of foreboding. Moorpark was getting bigger, better organized. The new high school is built to accommodate 1,500 students. Two new grade schools just opened up. There are already 250 freshmen. Carpinteria High, now with 720 students, is expected to peak in the next few years at 850. Since school ended last year, Moorpark has ballooned to 792 students, an increase from 612. The player pool is increasing.

“They’ll beat us next year,” said Johnson, who played halfback for Carp in 1945 and ’46. “I never thought Simi would ever beat us, but it happened. All of a sudden, they grew up. It’ll happen with Moorpark.”

It would be ironic if Moorpark’s population growth eliminates the school from Carp’s schedule before the streak is broken. That is a possibility. The cutoff for participation in the Tri-Valley League is usually about 900. “The CIF would move us out of the league if we start beating up on the other fellows,” Noel said, adding with a smile: “I look forward to that day.”

But what if they still haven’t beaten the Warriors? Poor Moorpark. Lucky Carp. “The streak will be forever,” Cravens said. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

MOORPARK vs. CARPINTERIA

A MISMATCHED RIVALRY

YEAR SCORE 1928 Moorpark 12, Carpinteria 8 1929 Moorpark 9, Carpinteria 0 1930 Carpinteria 31, Moorpark 6 1932 Carpinteria 12, Moorpark 0 1933 Carpinteria 18, Moorpark 6 1934 Moorpark 13, Carpinteria 6 1935 Carpinteria 25, Moorpark 0 1936 Carpinteria 21, Moorpark 7 1938 Carpinteria 39, Moorpark 0 1944 Carpinteria 40, Moorpark 0 1944 Carpinteria 40, Moorpark 0 1945 Carpinteria 31, Moorpark 12 1945 Carpinteria 41, Moorpark 6 1947 Carpinteria 18, Moorpark 6 1948 Carpinteria 45, Moorpark 0 1949 Carpinteria 39, Moorpark 6 1950 Carpinteria 52, Moorpark 7 1951 Carpinteria 49, Moorpark 6 1952 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 0 1953 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 0 1954 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 0 1955 Carpinteria 20, Moorpark 14 1956 Carpinteria 34, Moorpark 6 1958 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 8 1959 Carpinteria 35, Moorpark 14 1960 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 0 1961 Carpinteria 22, Moorpark 0 1962 Carpinteria 25, Moorpark 6 1963 Carpinteria 20, Moorpark 7 1964 Carpinteria 20, Moorpark 0 1965 Carpinteria 20, Moorpark 0 1966 Carpinteria 25, Moorpark 13 1967 Carpinteria 21, Moorpark 0 1968 Carpinteria 19, Moorpark 0 1969 Carpinteria 42, Moorpark 26 1970 Carpinteria 28, Moorpark 0 1971 Carpinteria 41, Moorpark 6 1972 Carpinteria 38, Moorpark 0 1973 Carpinteria 36, Moorpark 0 1974 Carpinteria 47, Moorpark 0 1975 Carpinteria 26, Moorpark 0 1976 Carpinteria 35, Moorpark 7 1977 Carpinteria 20, Moorpark 7 1978 Carpinteria 42, Moorpark 0 1979 Carpinteria 69, Moorpark 0 1980 Carpinteria 49, Moorpark 0 1981 Carpinteria 34, Moorpark 0 1982 Carpinteria 34, Moorpark 13 1983 Carpinteria 27, Moorpark 0 1984 Carpinteria 14, Moorpark 10 1985 Carpinteria 28, Moorpark 0 1986 Carpinteria 46, Moorpark 0 1987 Carpinteria 42, Moorpark 0

Totals: Carpinteria 1568, Moorpark 233

Moorpark and Carpinteria met twice during the 1944 and 1945 seasons.