Orange County Prep Wednesday : 8 B A L L : In Eight-Man Football, the Game’s the Same, Numbers Are Different

The Minutemen of Liberty Christian High School, having just scored their second touchdown against Leffingwell Christian, gaze to the bench for advice.

Go for two? Kick the extra point?

“Uh, sir,” wide receiver Hee Seok Ahn says to the referee, “we’d like to try for one.”

Which means the teams turn and jog to the south end of the field--the only end with goal posts.

When the ball is snapped, it zips right past the holder, and into the waiting hands of kicker Chris Buckels, who takes a two-step drop and throws a pass to Bryan James in the end zone for two points.

Every now and then, it pays to play at an elementary school.

Liberty Christian plays its home games at Robinwood Elementary in Huntington Beach. The field is only 80 yards long, which is OK, since the Minutemen play with 8 players--3 bricks shy of the usual 11-man load.

Liberty Christian, with 20 players and 100 total students, played its last home game Saturday with about 250 fans sitting in homemade wooden bleachers not far from a set of swings and a sandbox. An announcer sits perched at the top of the stands, right at the midfield stripe, the 40-yard line.

The eight-man field is 80 yards long by 40 yards wide, as opposed to 100 yards by 53 1/2 yards in 11-man football.

Six Orange County high schools play eight-man football amid similar trappings.

Liberty Christian in Huntington Beach, California Lutheran in Tustin, St. Margaret’s in San Juan Capistrano, Claremont in Garden Grove and Heritage in Buena Park play in the Southern Section’s Eight-Man (Small) Conference.

Eight-man coaches say their games are as hard-hitting and competitive as their 11-man counterparts. They spend just as much time practicing and preparing for the opponents.

Midway through the quarter, the Minutemen score again, turning the game into a rout. Once again, the teams turn and hoof it to the goal-post end of the field. This time, Buckels actually kicks the ball. It soars through the homemade wooden uprights, over two trees, beyond the school fence and into the backyard of a neighboring home.

When the teams line up for the kickoff, Buckels stands over the empty tee.

“Where’s a ball?,” he says. “We need a ball.”

After a minute of anxious waiting, someone on the sideline finds a spare ball and flips it to Buckels. Down at the fence, one kid throws the ball over the wall to his buddy, then hops back over the eight-foot-high chain-link.

Liberty (5-1-1) wins, 42-6, as quarterback Tim Crouch scores three touchdowns and James, a running back, gains 111 yards in 25 carries.

At California Lutheran (enrollment 90) in Tustin, the C-Hawks are playing host to West Shores of Salton City in their homecoming game.

But when Tom Rowe catches a six-yard touchdown pass from Matt Mahnke with 4:55 left in the third quarter, the game ends. The score puts the C-Hawks (6-1) over the 40-point mercy spread and California Lutheran wins, 45-0.

The rule, one of the major differences between the 8-man and 11-man game, keeps outmanned and outsized teams from getting players hurt. Except for that rule, the field size and the number of players, the games are essentially the same.

Heritage High (enrollment 85) started the season with only nine players, and when several of them were injured, the Patriots had to forfeit their first four games of the season.

“One game we had to stop at halftime because of injury,” Heritage Coach Darius Brown said. “If we lose even one player, it gives me eight. It’s frustrating. We’ve been going good. We haven’t been blown off the field.”

Though the Patriots are 0-7 this season, Brown remains hopeful. He’s making plans for next season.

“They haven’t had the same coach for the last three years,” Brown said. “I’ve already decided I’m going to do this again next year.”

These are exciting times at St. Margaret’s, an Episcopal school with an enrollment of 150. The Tartans are off to a 6-1 start and are the top-ranked team in the Eight-Man (Small) Conference.

“I tell the parents, if you don’t count the players on the field, there’s isn’t a difference,” said Brady Lock, St. Margaret’s coach.

Lock has coached at St. Margaret’s for two years. Before that, he was at La Canada’s Flintridge Prep, another school that plays eight-man football.

“Because we don’t have the numbers, you have to work with what you’ve got,” he said. “Here, you just don’t get a 250-pound kid who’s 6-feet-2 when he’s a freshman.

“One problem is self-esteem. A lot of them feel they’re not as good as 11-man guys. That’s not true. Some of them would be starting at the local (public) high schools.”

What about that, guys?

“I doubt if a lot of us could play because of our size,” said Travis Jones, a 6-foot, 190-pound senior middle linebacker.

“I’ve started all four years on varsity and I’d never even played football before,” said senior Chris Cooper, who is 6-2, 180. “I know that wouldn’t happen at a public school.”

Nevertheless, the pair are among seven players who have formed the foundation for the Tartans’ success this season. Seven seniors have played all four seasons that the school has fielded a team.

“That first year was a building year,” Jones said of his freshman season, when the Tartans were 2-8.

Said Lock: “The seniors took their lumps as ninth-graders, but they believed in themselves. They decided they were going to do well, and they have.

“We work out just as hard as . . . Loyola (High School in Los Angeles). The players are here in the summer. This is not Pop Warner or part-time football. We take it very seriously.”

Monday was another serious day, that is, until it arrived. A flatbed truck brought it down La Novia Avenue and past the football field. Players spotted the truck and its load and let out a collective whoop: “The new scoreboard is here!”

The scoreboard is to be installed before St. Margaret’s homecoming game against Big Pine. Lock ran the Tartans through one more offensive play, then announced: “All right, let’s go. We gotta go down and get the scoreboard.”

The players took the 600-pound scoreboard off the truck, carried it onto the field and rested it against a fence. The cement mixer would come later to pour the foundation for the supports, but that’s all in another day’s work.

“We carried the goal posts in, piece by piece,” one player said, pointing to a matched set. “Those things weren’t light.”

Bishop Oliver Garver has stopped by.

“I just came by to see Pete (Ensor, the defensive coordinator) and find out how the team is doing,” he said. “I didn’t know they were getting this new scoreboard.”

The bishop and Ensor, an Episcopal priest, attended seminary together. Ensor introduced the bishop to several of the players.

“Hey, 6-1. That’s great,” the bishop told them.

He couldn’t stay long, however, and soon the players returned to their offensive patterns. Finally, it could be a routine Monday practice.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN . . .

8-MAN AND 11-MAN

Field: 80 yards long and 40 yards wide, as opposed to 100 by 53 1/2 in 11-man football.

Players: Usually a quarterback, two running backs, two receivers and three linemen.

Numbers: A player can wear any jersey number at any position.

Touchbacks: The ball is placed at the 15-yard line instead of the 20.

Mercy Rule: Once a team gets a 40-point lead, the game is over.