Teams’ Achievements Boost Civic Pride : Paramount’s Football Championship Galvanizes a Community’s Comeback

Full of excitement and anticipation, the days that led to the championship football game lifted any doubts about pride in Paramount.

“All day at work all I do is think about Saturday night,” Allen Parker, a city planning commissioner, said last Thursday as Paramount High School’s date neared with Los Alamitos for the CIF Division III title.

In assembling an 11-1 record, the Pirates had raised enthusiasm to the point where “stadiums were coming unglued,” Parker said. The principal, Maureen Sanders, had even taken to walking the sidelines with the players.

A woman had called the school last week, frantically trying to acquire a letterman jacket for her husband, who graduated 25 years ago and was going crazy over the team.

The team had given the town, already in the clouds from being named an All-American City last summer, another reason to rejoice.

In physical and economical dilapidation eight years ago, Paramount has been trying to overcome a bad image. “The city has made a complete turnaround,” Parker said.

The players, having turned around from a 5-5 record a year ago, were easy to become attached to.

Players Praised for Heart

“Most of them are small, but they have hearts as big as their heads,” Parker said. “I love them.”

Coach Ken Sutch was as proud of their behavior as he was of their performance. “They are good students and they act right,” he said. “We tell them if they act like champions, they have a chance to be champions. It kind of fits in with the new image (the city) is trying to project.”

Founded in 1953, the school had never been on the brink of a CIF championship, and during a 5-year stretch in the ‘70s had won one game. But Sutch would bring to Saturday’s game a 50-24 record in seven seasons. The only blemish this year was a 17-14 loss to Dominguez, with whom the Pirates shared the San Gabriel Valley League title.

While fans, alumni and students went through the days preceding the game in what varied from dreamlike states to giddiness, the players prepared matter-of-factly.

“We’re not a rah-rah team, we just go out and play,” Sutch said as the Pirates practiced on their field with its daily view of Rosecrans Avenue and soiled horizons.

Their success was reflected in their maroon helmets, which had accumulated so many white stars as rewards for good plays that the white hid most of the maroon.

The players were indeed small, most well under 6 feet, and looked smaller beneath the towering light poles.

“Our kids expect the other team to be bigger,” Sutch said. “We’re always quick; kids around here grow up tough, hit hard, run fast.”

A short, portly man of 40, Sutch grew up in Long Beach and played football at Millikan High School.

“I was a middle-class white kid, and so I don’t understand what they go through,” he said of the home lives of his players. “A lot of them don’t have it easy, but they have a lot of pride.”

It was hoped that this pride would serve the Pirates well against the Orange County school in a game that had a haves-vs.-have-nots flavor.

“All year long,” quarterback Jack Manu said, “we were underdogs. I kind of like that, to prove people wrong.”

Besides ability and desire, the Pirates had also become noted for their multiracial makeup.

“We call it the United Nations,” Sutch had said earlier in his small office while going over the practice schedule with the assistants who he said make him look good--Jim Monico, Glen Kaskela, Mike Giers and Eliseo Rodriguez.

Although Latinos dominated the roster, it also contained contingents of blacks, whites and Samoans.

“It’s amazing,” said Sal Larios, a Pirate end who broke his ankle in a playoff victory over Santa Ana two weeks before and would not play in the big game. “We all stick together, unlike other places where you might stick with your own kind. We’re like a whole family.”

At Friday morning’s pep rally, students filled the gym bleachers as the band played “Louie Louie” and, from an era even more distant, “Rock Around the Clock.”

When it switched to the fight song, the players, wearing their white jerseys, ran through a tunnel formed by the cheerleaders. Larios, the last to appear, received the loudest roar as he limped so fast that his crutches flapped wildly.

After several Pirates thanked the students for their support, the black players, led by senior wide receiver/defensive back Clifford Parks, danced to more modern music that came from speakers. Sutch applauded, the students shrieked approval and the other players, who had been sitting impassively on folding chairs, broke up in laughter.

Soon, though, the alma mater signified that it was time to go back to class.

Saturday night was big time: bright lights, packed stands (8,000 fans) at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

Jack Manu scored his second touchdown of the game to give Paramount, the underdog, a 14-0 lead. The Pirates’ side of the stadium became unglued.

Down on the field, Principal Maureen Sanders, wearing a maroon coat and pacing the soft brown grass in black pumps, shouted: “Come on, defense!”

She looked up at the stands at the Pirate fans, many wearing letterman jackets from 10 to 20 years ago.

“Standing room only, isn’t that great,” she said. “Fabulous. Super.”

But the undefeated Los Alamitos team used a passing attack to cut the lead to 14-7 at the half. A wave of noise rose from the other side.

The Griffins kept the momentum at the start of the third quarter and quickly tied the game at 14.

Ismael Lopez then returned the ensuing kickoff to the Los Alamitos 45-yard line, and Manu took over again. He rolled out and ran to the 10.

“Come on, Jackie, get in his face,” yelled Rick Little, beefy man on the sidelines who was wearing a scarf around his neck. Little was a tackle on the 1978 Paramount team that went to the playoffs.

“I’ve been waiting 10 years for this,” Little said. “All my defensive buddies are up there in the stands. All of us are here to see it happen.”

Manu lofted a pass over two defenders to Laauli Toomalatai in the end zone to put Paramount ahead, 21-14.

With a slight smile, Sutch said to Athletic Director Paul Castillo: “Got to find a way to hold ‘em.”

The Pirates did, and Ignacio Villasenor kicked a 23-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter to push the lead to 24-14.

“Beat L.A.,” the crowd chanted.

Sanders waved her pompons.

Little screamed at the players: “We’re going to take this, aren’t we?”

The next time the Pirates got the ball, Manu ran 11 yards and pitched to Danny Godfrey who scored to make it 30-14.

When Manu came off the field, he put a baseball cap over his long black hair, paced jauntily and swigged water. The junior with arms as big as a lineman’s had done a hard night’s work--84 yards rushing, 159 yards passing--and looked it: his jersey was dirty and grass-stained, his elbow was covered with chalk, the tape on his wrists was ragged.

Victory was near. Sutch smiled, the band played “Louie Louie,” running back Leon Neal danced and Manu saluted the fans. But it wasn’t over.

Los Alamitos scored with 3:30 to play, causing profanity to fly along the Paramount bench until Parks broke up the attempted 2-point conversion pass.

When the game ended 30-20, Paramount fans flooded the field in one tremendous wave of emotion. With wet eyes, fathers and mothers sought their sons, who, beneath a caricature of a bearded pirate, celebrated what may always be the highlight of their lives.

When the lights were finally dimmed, Sanders carried off the championship plaque and the players fled to a far end of the field to pose with cheerleaders for pictures.

Above them, the scoreboard’s red and gold bulbs still told the story of how life has changed in Paramount.