THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN : Everything Else in the Neighborhood Takes Second Billing When Tustin Takes On Foothill

It’s the night of The Game and all of Tustin is abuzz. To say nothing of Lemon Heights.

After a hectic week of buildup, The Game is at hand. Civic pride, the Golden Gauntlet and bragging rights in the mini-malls along Newport Avenue--Tustin’s main drag--are on the line at 7:30 tonight.

And it’s the opening game of the season to boot.

Direct from Northrup Field on the Tustin High School campus, Tustin and Foothill high schools meet for the 22nd time. It’s sure to be a sellout, so get your tickets early.

It’ll be a renewal of what’s billed by the Tustin Unified School District as the the “Super Bowl” of Tustin. The district, taking a keen interest in The Game , sent out a press release promoting the contest. Not that it needs it.

Many in the close-knit community of 43,100 keep open the Friday night that the two district high schools play. What else would you expect from a town with signs along its border that read: “Work where you must, but live and shop in Tustin”?

Alumni, faculty members, parents, students and people who might attend only one high school game a year get excited for this clash of local heroes.

The local weekly newspaper, The Tustin News, will have three photographers and one reporter on hand. Last year, the paper devoted an entire page to photographs from The Game.

Never mind that Foothill is located on Dodge Avenue in the unincorporated area that includes Lemon Heights, Cowan Heights and Red Hill, just north of the city limits. Or that Foothill’s mailing address is Santa Ana. This is a crosstown rivalry through and through.

And forget the fact that Foothill has dominanted the series, holding a 15-4-2 advantage. The hitting and intensity will be fierce, in any case.

“St. Paul-Bishop Amat and St. Paul-Servite, those were wars,” said Marijon Ancich, Tustin coach and former coach at St. Paul in Santa Fe Springs. “There’s probably a good dozen games (in the Southern Section) with traditional rivalries. To us, the rest of those are just games.”

This is only Jerry Howell’s second season at Foothill, but it didn’t take long for him to realize the significance of The Game . Howell came to the school from Eastern Oregon State College.

“I didn’t think it was going to be as big as it was,” Howell said.

Last season, Foothill beat Tustin, 14-0, ending Tustin’s yearlong reign and wrested the Golden Gauntlet, the trophy that goes to the winner, back from the Tillers.

Tustin had injected a little life into the rivalry by breaking up Foothill’s long winning streak in 1986. Though the Tillers have been outscored, 369-200, (according to Tom Gorrell, The Tustin News sports editor), their 21-6 victory in ’86 ended 14 consecutive years of frustration and set off quite a postgame celebration.

Alayne Campbell, who taught economics at Tustin for 27 years, said at the time, “I almost retired this year, but I’m so glad that I didn’t. This is a wonderful evening, one we’ve been waiting for a long time.”

Ted Mullen, who coached at Foothill for six seasons and now is at Anaheim, still remembers his last Foothill-Tustin game, the 21-6 loss.

“Because of the long string of victories, we were afraid of complacency,” Mullen said. “And that’s what happened my last year at Foothill. We took too much for granted. We had some key turnovers and fell asleep a couple of times. We really blew that one.”

Duffy Clark, Tustin principal and a former assistant football coach and athletic director at Foothill, has seen the rivalry from both sides. That one game made him bleed red, black and white, Tustin’s colors.

“It was just a fantastic sense of elation by the kids, parents and the whole community,” Clark said. “It was something I hadn’t experienced at Foothill.”

Clark will have an extra interest in tonight’s game. His son, Greg, is a reserve defensive back and special teams player for . . . Foothill.

So which school will Clark be rooting for? All he’ll say is that “it’s going to be interesting for me.”

What makes The Game so special, according to those involved, is Tustin’s small-town, bedroom community atmosphere.

The football players, and indeed the students of both schools, have known each other in many cases since elementary school days. They’ve played Little League, Pop Warner and other youth sports together.

The rivalry began when Tustin High’s enrollment grew by leaps and bounds in the mid-1960s and Foothill was opened to relieve the overcrowding. Not long after the first meeting in 1966, Foothill seemed to have gained all the good football players, however. And from 1972 to 1985, the Knights did not lose to the Tillers.

Still, lopsided scores aside, The Game remained a tradition among the good citizens of Tustin.

“This is a special game,” said Jim Ryan, Foothill’s principal. “You’ll find a much greater percentage of the staff and student body are interested. Some of the teachers and (school) board members attended the schools. It’s kind of like a family rivalry.”

Adds Howell: “It’s an inter-family battle. The moms and dads know each other from the youth leagues. In a lot of cases you have the second or third (set of) brothers playing against each other.”

Once the game starts, emotion plays a big part in the outcome.

“It was always a game in which you could pretty much throw out the backgrounds of the two teams,” Mullen said. “What you’d done so far in the season didn’t matter.”

It’s especially important for Tustin to win, particularly because the Tillers are striving for a measure of equality in the rivalry.

“It’s a big, meaningful game in the community,” said Ancich, who is in his fourth season at Tustin. “It’s been going on for eons.

“It’s like the cold war. We have to prove ourselves. We can beat them 30 times in baseball and no one knows it. This is the high visibility game.”