Winning Acceptance : Football Star Perry Klein Wasn’t Used to the Tough Time He Got From Carson Team, But He Won That Game, Too

Typical of a new student, Perry Klein was the target of good-natured teasing after he transferred to Carson High School last April. Carson’s football players call it “bagging,” a form of insult that would make Don Rickles envious.

But how do you put down a young man with so much going for him? Klein has good looks and a pleasant personality, his family’s house sits on the beach in Malibu and he gained national attention last season by setting several passing records as the quarterback for Palisades High.

Without going into detail, let’s just say Klein’s teammates found a way to get under his skin.

“When he first came, we’d bag on Perry and he wasn’t used to it,” said offensive tackle Mohini Toilolo, one of several Samoans who befriended Klein after his highly publicized transfer. “He’d say, ‘Why do you guys always bag on me?’ Now he’s bagging back. He’s making people mad.”

Klein can laugh about it now. The rough times, when he seriously considered returning to Palisades because he felt uncomfortable at Carson, are over. He has endeared himself to his teammates with an off-the-wall sense of humor, and he’s won their respect with his pin-point passing.

“He’s accepted the challenge,” said Carson Coach Gene Vollnogle. “I think he has the respect of the kids. He certainly has the respect of the coaches.”

Going into Friday night’s showdown with Banning at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach, the 6-3, 180-pound senior has completed 47 of 70 passes (67%) for 809 yards and 11 touchdowns, with only 2 interceptions, while splitting time with Fred Gatlin, the other quarterback in Carson’s unique offensive scheme.

Klein, who returned to the lineup last week after missing most of two games with a sprained ankle, has an NCAA pass rating of 244.3, 71.8 points higher than Washington State’s Timm Rosenbach, the NCAA leader.

Yet, despite those impressive numbers and the state-record 3,899 yards he passed for last year at Palisades, Klein by his own design is ending his prep career as a part-time player. He knew the quarterback competition at Carson would be fierce--Vollnogle initially told him he was third string behind Gatlin and junior Armin Youngblood--but he left a secure situation at Palisades anyway.

It has been both a humbling and learning experience for him, but there are no regrets. He plans to stay at Carson until graduation, denying rumors that he will transfer once football season is over.

“I had a hard time adjusting at first because I really didn’t want to adjust,” Klein said. “I just wanted to come here and go to school and take care of things that had to do with my future. It didn’t work out. I was real unhappy.

“I just let myself be loose and things happened to me. People started coming up and talking to me. I was open with them and people have gotten to know me. It’s been fun. I like this school a lot.”

Klein didn’t feel the same way the week before Carson’s season opener early in September. According to Toilolo, Klein was verbally threatened by a former Carson player during an intersquad scrimmage. The incident prompted Klein to contact Palisades Coach Jack Epstein, who said that Klein expressed a desire to return to Palisades.

Klein met with Epstein and the Palisades football team, which led to a story in the Herald-Examiner reporting that Klein had returned to his old school. However, the next day Klein announced he was staying at Carson.

“I was really confused,” Klein said. “Some things that happened here didn’t make me feel like playing football anymore. I felt like it was going to be hell on the football field. The two-quarterback thing, I didn’t know if that was going to work. I was kind of unsure about everything.

“I didn’t want to bring the team down, that was the main thing. I wanted them to rally behind someone and not have them splitting off into different groups. There was a lot of commotion and I thought I was causing it. I felt that it would be best if I just went back (to Palisades).”

Klein’s friends at Carson helped coax him into staying.

“We read the things in the newspaper saying Perry was going to go back to Palisades,” Toilolo said. “We called him at his girlfriend’s house and told him, ‘Come back.’ From then on, all the guys who hated Perry started liking Perry for what he’s done.

“In school I used to hear things like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to kick Perry’s butt. I don’t like that white boy.’ I’d hear those things from some of the guys on our team. But us Samoans are friendly guys, we like to welcome people. We told Perry we were going to back him up all the way. We just told him to try his best and not let anyone stop him from showing his talent. Perry has a lot of talent, but people trying to stop him like that, it’s not right.”

Klein is one of eight white players on a 60-man varsity squad dominated by blacks and Samoans. More than a racial issue, however, the initial resentment toward Klein seems to have been motivated by territorial rights and misguided loyalties.

Toilolo said most of the ill feelings directed at Klein came from friends of Gatlin, whose starting job was suddenly in jeopardy.

“It’s just that some of Fred’s friends thought he couldn’t handle the pressure,” Toilolo said. “I think Fred could have. His friends tried to back him up in the wrong way. I know Fred isn’t the kind of guy who would threaten anyone. Fred and Perry are like brothers now.”

Klein says the two-quarterback system has worked, even though it has resulted in a drastic reduction in his statistics from last year when he accounted for about 4,300 yards in total offense and passed for 36 touchdowns. It’s doubtful he will finish with half of those totals this season.

He says giving up individual statistics will be more than worth it if the Colts can win the L.A. City 4-A championship. Klein came close to a City title last year, but Palisades lost to Franklin, 30-14, in the 3-A finals.

“I really don’t care about the statistics because statistics come with a winning team,” he said. “At Palisades I had all the statistics in the world, and we won, but then we’d lose big games. It wasn’t satisfying. I wanted to come someplace where we could win and I could do well.”

To make the transfer legal, Klein’s parents rented a 2-bedroom apartment in Carson, presumably so Klein’s father, Danny, could live closer to his work during the week. Danny Klein, a former single-wing tailback at East L.A.’s Roosevelt High, owns a surplus electronics business in Gardena.

However, others reasoned that the family made the move so Klein could play his senior season for Carson, traditionally one of the Southland’s winningest football teams. Klein would have been the only returning starter on Palisades, which is struggling with a 1-7 record.

Another factor that may have lured Klein to Carson was the presence of offensive coordinator Steve Clarkson, a former Palisades assistant coach who worked extensively with the quarterback last year. Klein credited Clarkson for much of his success as a junior.

Clarkson, a former quarterback at San Jose State and in the NFL, says Klein has improved his game at Carson.

“When you look at the statistics, you’d never know it,” he said. “But if you broke it down to the amount of playing time he gets, he’s doing well. He’s running the veer, and mixing that into his game has really helped him.

“Coming (to Carson) was a humbling experience for him. I think that’s what made him work harder. He knew before he came here that he might not start, but he came anyway and he’s handled the situation quite well.”

Clarkson, who is black, says it hasn’t taken long for Klein to shake the image of a beach boy and adapt to a new environment.

“He’s learned all the black dances and invented a couple of others,” he said. “Kids have been hanging out at his (Malibu) house on weekends and at his apartment during the week.”

Toilolo is one of the Carson players who has spent the weekend at Klein’s 2-story house in the Broad Beach section of Malibu, north of Zuma Beach. And, like others, Toilolo has wondered why Klein would want to leave the surf for the turf of Carson.

“I think it’s funny,” he said. “His apartment is just a little room, it’s like a little garage. When we stayed in his house in Malibu, I couldn’t believe only three people lived in that big mansion. I said, ‘Perry, let me move in.’ ”

Klein, who sometimes throws impromptu parties at his apartment after games, says he plans to entertain the entire team at his Malibu house if Carson wins the City title.

After the football season, he intends to play on the Colts’ volleyball team again. Last year he was named league MVP even though he joined Carson mid-way through the season following his transfer. Ironically, the Colts lost in the playoffs to Palisades, where Klein was taunted by many of his ex-classmates.

“We walked into the gym during the middle of a big pep rally and everyone started booing me,” he recalled. “Some guys came up to me and threatened me. I figured that would come, but a lot of people really surprised me.”

Klein has participated in three different high school football programs. As a ninth-grader at Malibu Park Junior High, he played on the sophomore team at Santa Monica, which did not have ninth grade at the time. Two of his teammates were Malibu neighbor Kevin Kelly, now a highly recruited offensive lineman for Santa Monica, and running back Glyn Milburn, a freshman at Oklahoma who set numerous rushing records for Santa Monica last season.

Klein said because of “politics” at Santa Monica, he obtained a permit to attend Palisades in the 10th grade. He played quarterback and cornerback his sophomore year on the varsity, and last season he earned City 3-A Player of the Year honors with a series of phenomenal games.

He opened the season by passing for 315 yards and 4 touchdowns against his former teammates at Santa Monica. He went on to complete 323 of 483 attempts, including 67 of 69 shovel passes, and he set national records for completions (46) and consecutive completions (22) in a win over L.A. Jordan. Klein passed for 562 yards in that game, breaking a state record which had stood for 21 years.

Performances like that earned Klein national exposure and led to his being named to several preseason All-American teams this year. He said UC Berkeley, Penn State, Notre Dame and Alabama are among the colleges that have contacted him.

Dick Lascola, director of the Fallbrook-based Scouting Evaluation Assn., gave Klein high marks for a quick release but said the quarterback needs to improve his mobility.

“There are things he needs to work on,” he said. “He has to improve his foot speed and work on stepping into the pocket to avoid the rush. He has a chance to play (at a college), but I don’t think his transfer helped him. At Palisades, the offense was built around him.”

Football and recruiting were high on Klein’s priority list when he came to Carson last spring. Now, he considers the game more fun and occasionally cuts loose with zany antics.

As his teammates laughed in the background, Klein explained to a reporter how he had painted “OO7” on the heels of his cleats and how he wears his socks pulled up over his knees, “like Superman.”

“I think I learned a lot by coming here and having difficulty at the beginning,” he said. “I realize that football means a lot to me, but it really is not the most important thing. It was real important when I came here. I put a little too much importance on it. I didn’t take it for what it really is, a game. Now I’m having fun.”

Maybe Klein’s mother, Diana, said it best on the weekend before her son started classes at Carson:

“I think they will accept Perry, especially when he tries hard to be a valuable player on the team. He’ll try his best. He’s always been a kid who likes to please.”