End Almost in Sight for Harbor’s Agony : Seahawks Lose to Southwest, 24-12

The end of an excruciating season is almost in sight for Harbor College.

After dropping their seventh consecutive Western State Conference game, 24-12, on Saturday at L.A. Southwest, the Seahawks need only play host to Santa Barbara next Saturday before they can forget about a year in which their first- and second-string quarterbacks were lost to injuries and they averaged a mere 12.6 points a game.

Another victory won’t allow the Seahawks (1-9, 1-7 in the WSC) the pleasure of claiming that they improved on last year’s 2-7-1 campaign. But it would give them the satisfaction of prevailing with a 5-foot, 8-inch quarterback, Marvin Person, who was asked to switch from tailback to quarterback seven games into the season.

Person managed to complete 4 of 15 passes for 45 yards against Southwest (5-4, 4-4). He also accounted for Harbor’s only touchdown, a 1-yard run with 9:34 left in the first half.

Strangely, Person doesn’t want to forget his team’s disappointing year.

“You can learn from your losses,” Person said, “and we’ll learn from a lot of those this year.”

While Person spent most of the day handing and pitching the ball to tailback Archie Jean (12 carries, 70 yards) and fullback Perris Clark (30 carries, 112 yards), Southwest quarterback Herman Tatum showed why he is the top-rated passer in the conference.

Tatum, a 6-foot, 190-pound sophomore from Los Angeles High, completed only 12 of 33 passes, but the completions were good for 222 yards and 4 touchdowns.

Harbor built a 9-0 second-quarter lead on Person’s scoring run and a 28-yard Luis Solorio field goal, but in less than 7 minutes Tatum gave Southwest a 12-9 lead on touchdown passes of 15 yards to wide receiver Ansel Littlejohn and 10 yards to tight end Ken Simon.

Simon’s score followed an errant snap that went over the head of Harbor punter Solorio. Southwest’s William Barker recovered on the Harbor 23-yard line, and Tatum got Southwest across the goal line with 2 completions.

“If Herman is given time to throw, he can really do some things,” said Southwest Coach Henry Washington.

Tatum and Person threw two interceptions apiece. But while Person yielded to a Harbor ground game that rumbled for chunks of meaningless yardage, Tatum equaled his second-quarter performance with two more touchdown passes in the third quarter, just 5 minutes and 45 seconds apart.

By then, Southwest held a 24-12 advantage that proved to be the final score.