The Compact Models : Jimenez--a Runaway Achiever

Gabe Jimenez couldn’t help but notice the change in his old friend. Jimenez, a Burbank High running back, had not spent time with Burroughs quarterback Jeff Barrett since the two played youth football together in Burbank.

When their paths crossed again last summer while Jimenez was serving ice cream at a Burbank shop, Jimenez suggested they meet after work and play catch.

“While we were still just warming up, he’s throwing perfect 50-yard passes to me,” Jimenez said. “I couldn’t believe how good he had gotten.”

But Barrett, the third leading passer in the Valley area, isn’t the only one to have shown improvement. In his youth football days, Jimenez was “the smallest guy on the team, probably 5-0, 100 pounds.”

After carrying the ball sparingly last season at fullback, Jimenez emerged as Burbank’s most potent offensive player this season, rushing for a school-record 1,135 yards. Abo Velasco, who plays at Cal State Northridge, gained 1,046 yards last year.

“Gabe hasn’t surprised me at all,” Burbank Coach Dave Carson said. “I saw sparks of brilliance in him his junior year, but Abo Velasco was having such a great year, Gabe didn’t get to carry the ball much.”

It didn’t take Carson long to find Velasco’s replacement. In Burbank’s first game of the season against Claremont, Jimenez carried the ball 26 times for 169 yards and a touchdown.

“Right then I knew that I had found my new tailback,” Carson said.

Jimenez, a senior, rushed for more than 100 yards in a game seven times with a high of 198 against Crescenta Valley. With those numbers, size might be the only thing keeping Jimenez from a Division I scholarship. At 5-7, 160 pounds, he was still one of the smallest players on the team.

“I don’t have that much speed. I’m a slasher,” said Jimenez, who runs the 40 in 4.8 seconds. “I try to cut as much as possible, to find a hole. On a sweep, I’m not going to beat the defense to the outside, so I look for the cutback. That way I’ll have a better chance of getting my four or five yards.”

Jimenez was particularly reliable in short-yardage situations.

“There were a couple times this season, when on fourth and short, we’d take a timeout and Gabe would come over to the sidelines. I’d tell him how many yards we needed for a first down, and he’d just say, ‘OK,’ ” Carson said. “And he’d go out and do it.”

Jimenez is described by Carson and teammates as a quiet leader. And if a team ever needed leaders, it was this year’s Burbank squad.

After starting the season with six wins in eight games and a 3-0 Foothill League record, Burbank had clinched a berth in the Northwestern Conference playoffs. But the season went down the drain when Burbank was forced to forfeit its six wins for use of an ineligible player.

“At first, I took it real hard. I was looking forward to the playoffs,” said Jimenez, a team captain. “Coach Carson told us what happened and the team had a meeting in the weight room, and we decided to practice like nothing had happened. The four team captains, we tried to pick everybody up.”

Burbank played one of its best games of the season after learning of the forfeiture, losing to Hart, the Northwestern Conference champion, 17-14. The players felt that they had made a point--the Bulldogs weren’t going to roll over and play dead the rest of the season.

But whatever inspiration fueled the Bulldogs evaporated a week later when they were destroyed, 41-0, by Barrett and Burroughs, their cross-town rival. Jimenez was a lone bright spot in the Burroughs game, gaining 100 yards to break Velasco’s record.