Finding Victory in Defeat : <i> Each</i> Team Is an Underdog, but That Doesn’t Deter Savanna and Garden Grove High Fans Who Come to Witness Which Squad Has Greater Determination.

It was the football game that no one had been waiting for: Savanna versus Garden Grove High, a match-up of teams that last year more closely resembled power outages than powerhouses.

Consider the ugly numbers. Savanna had lost its last 11 games, including all 10 last season, when it was outscored by its opponents 376 to 43.

Garden Grove had fared only slightly better, scoring 66 points to its opponents’ 318 while racking up nine losses and a single, 10-7 victory over--who else?--Savanna.

Would anyone bother coming out to Garden Grove on Friday night to watch what threatened to be a scoreless exercise in futility?

You bet. Last week’s games kicked off another high school football season in Orange County, where tickets cost only a buck or two, your boyfriend, buddy or son is out there on the field getting his ribs pounded, and your favorite teacher is the public address announcer.

Respectable Crowd

While the stands were far from filled at Garden Grove High School Friday night, the crowd was respectable--perhaps 1,000 people on both sides of the field.

“You gotta give them a chance,” said 13-year-old Anne Braam, sitting in the bleachers at her first football game as a ninth-grader at Garden Grove. “There is hope. I just wish the cheerleaders would shut up so we could see the game better.”

Her friend Kay Kristin Morse piped in: “We stink. But it’s pretty cool to be here. And we need fans.” The third member of the trio, Nancy Gossett, said she came to the game “because I got a ride from my sister,” who is not sitting anywhere near these three freshmen.

A few rows away, Donna Hardy was sitting with her daughter, Anna Flaws, who was graduated from Garden Grove a few years back. Her boys played last year, she said, and, even though she has no more kids at the school, she rarely misses a game.

“I’m a firm believer that if you’re a fan, you’re going to be here win or lose,” said Hardy, wearing the satiny red booster jacket of the Argonauts. “I feel real bad if they don’t get the support of kids and parents.”

John Dahlem, assistant principal at Savanna High School in Anaheim, said that has never been a problem. “We’ve always had tremendous support here, win or lose,” Dahlem said. “It amazed me when I came over from another school. It’s part of the hoopla, everyone seems to get excited. I’m not so sure there would be that big of a difference in the crowds if we were crushing everybody. I don’t want to say that we accept losing, but I think we’re just happy to have football.”

Peggy Mahfood, acting principal at Garden Grove High, said there is no one reason why the school has not had a winning football team the past few years.

“We don’t have a lot of big kids on our campus. If you were to walk our campus, you’d see that,” Mahfood said. “And then once you start losing, I think the tendency is that kids don’t want to be involved in those programs. . . . You get on a track and you’re not being real successful, and your numbers dwindle.

“I think they will be successful this year. Does that mean wins or losses? If they can walk away and feel good about this season, that will be as important as going through the season 10 and 0.”

The school’s football program suffered a crisis last month when Coach Larry Hirt abruptly packed up and left for Texas. Jeff Buenafe, whose name translates from the Spanish, appropriately, to “good faith,” took over just a few weeks before Friday’s opener.

Passing Game

“Right now my goal is to see the team improve week by week and be competitive in every game,” Buenafe said following a pep rally Friday. He promised the team would come out throwing. “Last year we couldn’t hit our bottoms with a bucket of rice. Tonight, we’re going to pass the football.”

So what happened? Garden Grove took the opening kickoff and pounded its way downfield for a touchdown, behind the powerful legs of fullback Jerrold Johnson, a Bermuda native who only learned the game in high school. The team’s 25 varsity players--most schools muster up at least twice that many--exalted along the sideline, butting heads and pounding shoulder pads.

The extra point attempt failed, but Garden Grove had a 6-0 lead.

Savanna has both the bigger and more numerous squad, and it has more starters returning from last year. But in the first half it could do little right, as officials’ yellow penalty flags seemed to nullify every long gain made. The squad appeared confused--understandable for a team nicknamed the Rebels and whose players wear little Confederate flags on their shoulders, even though their school name refers to a grassy plain, and not the Georgia city near the Atlantic coast.

“Sure, it’s been disappointing; this is my fourth year watching these games,” said Dennis Hagerty in the Savanna bleachers, the father of a Rebel cheerleader and vice president of the song and cheer booster club. “Last year, the boys tried hard but they didn’t quite have it. Sometimes it’s tough to cheer when they’re losing by 60 points. But this year has a lot of potential.”

One thing about high school football: No matter how bad the teams, or maybe especially when they’re both bad, the games can still be exciting. With kids, you never know what’s going to happen next.

Case in point: It was late in the third quarter, and Garden Grove had a 9-0 lead. A drive stalled, and the Garden Grove kicker dropped back to punt on fourth down. But the center snap sailed high over his head, coming to rest finally at the Argonauts five-yard line. Savanna, despite its own offensive problems and after taking a couple of giant steps backwards on penalties, punched it in for a touchdown. Savanna trailed by just three points, 9-6.

Neither team could mount an attack in the fourth quarter, and Savanna got the ball on its own 17 yard line with a minute and a half to play for one last desperation drive. A long pass to senior Brandon Ingram brought the Rebels into Argonauts territory, and then, with just 29 seconds left, another pass--this one a Hail Mary on fourth down--is somehow snatched out of two defenders’ hands by Ingram, who falls in the end zone, clutching Savanna’s first victory in more than a year securely to his chest.

Ingram and his high school teammates leaped and celebrated and carried on as if they had won a league championship, not just a game against another team down on its luck. No one could blame them. It wasn’t high school football at its best, but it was a heck of a lot of fun.