FULL-HOUSE BACKFIELD : Thompsons Developed Their Own Athletic Tradition at Huntington Beach

An athletic era ended at Huntington Beach High School when Andy Thompson accepted his diploma in June.

For his parents, Dick and Sally, it marked the end of 14 years of booster club meetings, Friday night basketball games, football bus trips and all-night drives.

After traveling all over the state to watch their five sons play sports, Dick and Sally now will have to fly to see Andy, who will attend Hawaii-Hilo on a basketball scholarship this fall.

“Andy really surprised me going to Hawaii,” Dick said. “With all the kids gone, this will be a big change for us. But I’m sure we’ll make it to the islands to catch a few of Andy’s games.”

Kathy, now 30, was the first of the six Thompsons to attend the school, but stuck with cheerleading and student council instead of sports. The family’s athletic contributions started with Rico, now 27, and followed with Bobby, 25; Billy, 24; Danny, 23 and Andy, 18.

“Andy leaving really hit Dad hard,” Kathy said. “Dad lived for those games.”

Dick and Sally, both 53, have logged thousands of miles following their sons’ high school and college athletic careers.

In the early 1980s, they would attend Billy and Bobby’s high school basketball games on Friday nights, then drive all night to watch Rico play basketball at Stanislaus State in Turlock the next day.

“That was an eight- or nine-hour drive,” said Dick, president of a hardware firm in Norwalk. “But it was a great experience.”

For 13 of the past 14 years, they watched at least one of their sons dribble a basketball or run with a football at Huntington Beach. The only school year a Thompson wasn’t listed in the Oilers’ yearbook was 1984-85, when Danny was a redshirt freshman at UCLA and Andy was an eighth-grader.

Roy Miller, the Oilers’ basketball coach since 1976, watched the Thompson brothers mature from inexperienced freshmen into confident seniors.

“After all these years I have become very spoiled with having a Thompson in my program,” Miller said. “I’m going to miss seeing Dick and Sally. I know I’m going to miss the leadership and character each (boy) displayed on and off the court.”

Danny, the best known of the brothers after playing fullback and tailback at UCLA the past four years, said the competition between family members helped them improve.

“Rico excelled in basketball and set the example for us,” said Danny, who works with an aluminum distribution company. “By the time I arrived, everyone was saying, ‘Here’s another Thompson; what’s he going to do?’ Then, when Andy came around, everyone expected him to be good.

“We were competitive since we were young. We learned from each others’ mistakes.”

Teachers often confused the brothers, who have short, brown hair and thick, shaggy eyebrows.

“Some of the older teachers called me Billy,” Danny said. “Some called me Bobby, because I was slow. I didn’t mind. It was fun to be labeled one of my brothers because I looked up to them.”

Rico was the best athlete in the family, Danny said. Rico played football, basketball and baseball in high school and later became a Division III academic All-American in basketball at Stanislaus State. He helped Stanislaus reach the Division III Final Four his senior year.

Sally said Rico, now a teacher and basketball coach at San Marcos High School, “always led the pack” when he was younger.

“I’ve always agreed with Rose Kennedy, who said, ‘If you train the first one right, the others will follow,’ ” Sally said. “He’s really a good teacher. He relates to the kids well because of his brothers. They aren’t afraid to take their problems to him.”

Rico probably would have been recruited by larger schools had it not been for a blood disorder between his junior and senior years, Dick said.

Like Rico, Bobby played football, basketball and baseball at Huntington Beach.

After playing cornerback in high school, Bobby switched to strong safety and played two years at Golden West College and two seasons at Sacramento State. At just under six feet tall, Bobby was too small for a linebacker and too slow for a cornerback, his father said.

Dick said Bobby, now a sales representative in a Phoenix hardware company, was a “fierce competitor.”

“I always taught my sons to give their all,” said Dick, who played basketball and football at the University of Massachusetts. “I didn’t care if they excelled. It was the effort I was looking for.”

Away from the playing field, Bobby was the most easygoing of the brothers. He kept everyone relaxed, Danny said.

“He played football really loose,” Danny said. “But he was a devastating hitter. I still have people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re Bobby’s brother. He hit me so hard once he gave me a headache.’ ”

While Bobby relied on power and competitiveness to earn a college scholarship, Billy used finesse. He gave up football in his junior year to concentrate on his favorite sport, basketball.

In 1983, Billy, a senior, and Danny, a junior, led the Oilers to the Sunset League title and their first Southern Section basketball playoff appearance in five years. They won two playoff games before losing in the quarterfinals.

Billy’s tricky ballhandling and pinpoint passing fit perfectly into the Oilers’ offense, and those skills carried him to a basketball career at Biola College.

“He was a good basketball player,” Dick said. “But he wasn’t a good shooter. To play at the bigger schools, you had to put the ball in the hole. But he had other skills. He was very, very quick.”

Billy, who now works with a hardware company in Norwalk, had some deceptive moves away from the basketball court, too.

“He always got me into trouble,” Danny said. “He would start something and then he would weasel out of it. I guess he was my role model. But he got straight A’s in school, and I got straight Cs. Everything he did, I never quite measured up to.”

Some measured Danny by a different set of standards. The Times’ Orange County football player of the year in 1984, Danny left the school with a new self-image.

As a junior, he scored three touchdowns and gained 220 yards in 23 carries against Ocean View. That victory ended the Oilers’ six-year, 35-game Sunset League losing streak.

The next year, he scored twice and gained 209 yards as Huntington Beach beat Edison, an Orange County powerhouse. The last time the Oilers had beaten Edison--in 1969--Danny was 3.

“Beating Edison was a big highlight of my high school career,” he said. “So was the 1983 basketball season. That was a great team. I’ve never played on a team where there was so much friendship.”

After the success in 1983, the Oilers’ basketball team struggled in 1984. Miller promoted four junior varsity players to the varsity, then told Danny that if he quit basketball to concentrate on the upcoming track season, it would be OK with him.

Danny said no.

“He wanted no part of it,” Miller said. “That’s the way they (Thompsons) are. We had up and down years, but they never quit. If they start something, they want to finish it.”

There was a time when family members doubted if Danny would even get started in athletics.

“I just wasn’t as interested in sports as my brothers were,” he said. “They would watch games on TV and then go outside and play. I shied away. I was a daydreamer and a loner.”

Danny calls himself the family’s “black sheep.” He got into mischief when he was young, which turned into trouble when he grew older.

“I did a lot of things I can’t talk about,” he said. “I guess I was a curious kid. I tried a lot of things.”

In high school, Danny began channeling his negative energy into something positive--athletics.

He earned a scholarship to UCLA, redshirted his freshman year and then struggled to find a niche in the backfield. He played tailback, fullback and wingback, often blocking for Eric Ball and Gaston Green.

Danny carried the ball only 55 times for 307 yards in his four seasons with the Bruins. He caught nine passes for 39 yards and four touchdowns.

One of those touchdown catches came on Christmas Day at the Aloha Bowl. Thompson caught a tipped pass in the end zone while lying on his back to help the Bruins beat Florida 20-16.

“That has to rank as the highlight of my college career,” he said.

While Danny struggled in his college career, Andy was finding that life in the twilight of his brother’s career at Huntington Beach had a sunny side, too.

Andy played football, basketball and ran the 300 intermediate hurdles his freshman and sophomore years. He competed in football and basketball as a junior before dropping football his senior year.

As a senior, Andy averaged 10.4 points a game and led the team in free-throw percentage (.776) and assists (125) while helping the Oilers to the Sunset League championship. Andy, a point guard, was named to the All-Sunset League first team and played in the Orange County All-Star basketball game.

“Andy was far removed from the rest of us because he was so much younger,” Danny said. “He always hung around me and tried to emulate me. I was the leader of his clan of friends in the neighborhood.”

Because of their 12-year difference in age, Kathy thought of Andy as more of a son than a brother.

“My children (Lindsey, 9, and Robert, 5) treated Andy more like a brother than an uncle,” she said. “They would really go at it.”

Kathy said she has lost track of the number of games she has attended, following both her brothers’ careers and her husband, Steve Brooks, who coaches boys’ basketball at Los Alamitos.

“People always ask me if it’s tough being a coach’s wife,” she said. “But I was raised in an athletic environment. I think it’s exciting. There’s ups and downs. There’s always something different happening.”

Kathy, Sally and Dick won’t have any trouble picking who to cheer for if Los Alamitos plays Huntington Beach in basketball again. The game will no longer be a family affair, something Sally said they will miss.

“At least we still have Steve’s team to watch,” she said.