A New Era for the Eagles : Usually Out-Manned El Segundo Gridders Will No Longer Have to Play ‘Out of Their League’

For three decades, John Stevenson watched football teams at El Segundo High fight an uphill battle to compete with schools boasting higher enrollments and deeper benches.

As the situation progressively became more inequitable, it disturbed a sense of fair play in El Segundo’s longtime athletic director and baseball coach.

“We’ve always had to play against schools two to four times bigger than us,” Stevenson said. “The kids play their hearts out, but they’re battling to stay even and go 5-5. I don’t know why our kids should have to do that.”

Much to the delight of El Segundo coaches, those days are over.

The Eagles will embark on a new athletic era Saturday night when they play their inaugural game in the Santa Fe League against Daniel Murphy High. What makes the contest noteworthy is the fact that El Segundo, a public school, is the first non-Catholic member of the league.

The other seven members, including Mary Star of San Pedro, are parochial schools with comparable enrollments to El Segundo, which has about 600 students in grades nine through 12.

In this small community bordered on the north by Los Angeles International Airport, on the east by the sprawling aerospace industry, on the south by the Chevron refinery and on the west by the Pacific Ocean, that figure represents roughly half of the school’s peak enrollment of 1,150 students in 1974. Not surprisingly, that was the last year the Eagles won a league football title.

El Segundo football Coach Steve Newell, who has taught at the school since 1969, says moving to the Santa Fe League is the best thing that could happen to the program.

“Finally we’ll get to see what we can do against schools our size,” said Newell, whose team takes a 3-0 record into Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. game at St. Bernard High. “Our problem all along is that we have been locked in with schools that have such larger enrollments.”

Before last season, when the Eagles posted a surprising second-place finish in the Pioneer League, they had won only three league games in four years. The only Pioneer school with a comparable enrollment to El Segundo’s was Miraleste with 750 students. The other four schools--Leuzinger, Redondo, Morningside and Centennial--have enrollments of 1,400 or higher. Leuzinger, winner of three of the last four Pioneer football titles, has nearly 3,000 students.

When the Pioneer League was disbanded last year because of releaguing, El Segundo took the opportunity to leave the athletic framework of the South Bay area and join two Catholic leagues in most sports. The Eagles will compete in football and basketball in the Santa Fe League. All other sports will compete in the parochial Camino Real League except water polo, swimming (Ocean League) and wrestling (free lance).

“The way it ended up, there was nowhere to go with an enrollment our size other than the Catholic schools,” Newell said.

Reaction to El Segundo joining the Santa Fe League was mixed among coaches and administrators at the league’s Catholic schools. Other members of the SFL are Mary Star (enrollment 280), St. Monica of Santa Monica (750), Cantwell of Montebello (294, all boys) and four schools with Los Angeles addresses--Pater Noster (280, all boys), Cathedral (400, all boys), Salesian (400, all boys) and Murphy (375, all boys).

“I think it’s good,” said Salesian football Coach Ralph Godfrey. “El Segundo is isolated from us up here in East L.A., so I have no problem with it. My kids mainly ask, ‘Where is El Segundo?’ and ‘How big are they?’

“I guess as long as they’re not practicing with the Raiders, we’ll be in good shape.”

Said Mary Star Coach Jerry Aguilar: “I think it’s strange. I’d like to know the politics that were involved. I really don’t care, but I’m surprised. It’s not the way the Catholic leagues usually do things. I don’t mind as long as they bring some competitiveness to the league, which they do.”

El Segundo, ranked No. 4 in the CIF Division VIII poll and a semifinalist in the CIF playoffs last season, is considered the league co-favorite with St. Monica (3-0), which is ranked No. 7. The other six teams all posted non-league records below .500. Murphy owns a 1-2 mark.

At least one administrator voiced concern that El Segundo might have an advantage over some schools because of athletic facilities.

“It’s going to be a little bit challenging as far as having a public school with its numerous facilities competing against Catholic schools with limited facilities,” said Murphy Athletic Director George Vranau.

Whereas El Segundo has its football field on campus, Murphy players suit up and walk several blocks to a nearby park in order to practice. “It’s quite a parade,” Vranau said.

Murphy will play home games this season at St. Bernard and Culver City. Other Santa Fe League schools without campus football fields are St. Monica, Mary Star and Salesian.

On the other hand, El Segundo could argue that it is at a disadvantage against Catholic schools because it has geographical attendance boundaries. Stevenson said he is not concerned about that, however.

“I’m not worried about it at all as long as we have an equal number of students,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can with the athletes we have coming to El Segundo.”

Newell says the main advantage of playing in a smaller league is that El Segundo will finally be competing against football teams with equal depth.

“We can compete on this level because the teams draw from student bodies that are comparable in size to ours,” he said. “When they get injuries and we get injuries, everything is equal. When you play larger schools, they just have somebody else step in and you don’t notice any drop-off.”

Because most of El Segundo’s top players go both ways, Newell says it’s like losing two starters when an injury occurs. That was the case two weeks ago when senior Donovan Gallatin, a starting wide receiver and defensive back, was lost for the season with a broken thumb.

But with a strong nucleus headed by tailback Erik Evans, the South Bay’s leading scorer with 50 points, the Eagles should be among the league’s most formidable teams. However, Newell says this year’s team is an exception.

“We told the Catholic schools that last year’s team and this year’s team are going to be the height of our football program for a long, long time,” he said. “We’re not always going to be this strong.”

This is not the first time El Segundo has competed in a league with Catholic schools. For several years in the early 1970s, the Pioneer League was made up of Lawndale, Leuzinger, El Segundo, St. Bernard, St. Monica and Murphy.

Under that format, the Eagles won their last league championship by tying Lawndale for first place in 1974.

Fourteen years later, El Segundo hopes history repeats.