SAN DIEGO HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL : Mt. Carmel Nips Vista, 15-14 : Loss of Faraimo, Strojny Costly to Panthers

Bill Christopher, Mt. Carmel High School football coach, heard the talk as he walked through the gates of Vista’s stadium.

Rumor had it that Vista’s starting quarterback, Bill Faraimo, and starting fullback David Strojny would not play Friday night.

It turned out to be true. Faraimo was out with a sprained left knee; Strojny was sidelined for academic reasons. Without them, Vista lost, 15-14, to Mt. Carmel in a Palomar League game.

Mt. Carmel, off to its best start ever, is 7-0 overall and 4-0 in league play. Vista fell to 5-3, 3-2.

“It’s an adventure,” said Christopher, whose team narrowly defeated Orange Glen two weeks ago, 26-21. “It’s better than joining the Army, or whatever it is you join for an adventure.”

Vista Coach Dick Haines knew the adventure was over when Mt. Carmel quarterback Chris Beeman fooled his defense with a play-action, fake bootleg around left end. Beeman gained 15 yards on a third-and-14 play to the Mt. Carmel 36-yard line, enabling the winners to maintain possession of the ball in the game’s final minute.

“That did it,” Haines said.

Actually, it was Vista’s sloppy play in the first half that really buried the Panthers on the school’s 50th anniversary and homecoming.

Vista suffered four first-half turnovers.

Late in the second period, Mt. Carmel’s Craig Woodall blocked Jon Christansen’s punt, the Sundevils recovering on the Panthers’ eight-yard line.

On the next play, Beeman hit a diving Gannon Tidwell in the end zone for the game’s first touchdown with less than three minutes to play in the first half.

Vista scored its first touchdown with 4:13 left in the third period, when Chris Cannon, playing in his first game as a quarterback, pitched to Marc Jones, who ran 38 yards for the score.

Cannon ran for the two-point conversion.

Mt. Carmel countered in the final seconds of the third period, when Beeman stepped out of a crowd of Vista defenders and hit wide receiver Alan Cross for a 32-yard scoring strike.

Vista narrowed Mt. Carmel’s lead to 15-14 when Cannon scored on an option from the five. Vista opted to go for the two-point conversion, but Cannon was tackled at the two by Sundevil linebacker Marcus Lee.