Mitchell Movin’ On Up : He Finds Home in Los Alamitos’ Backfield

Erik Mitchell can move.

Right, and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. After all, this guy runs a 4.3 in the 40-yard dash.

Already this season, Mitchell has returned a kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown and scored on runs of 55 and 54 yards for Los Alamitos High School, which plays Villa Park tonight at Veterans Stadium. Last week against Servite, he gained 245 yards in 20 carries.

But not all of Mitchell’s moves have turned into statistics.

His family has moved several times. Sometimes the reasons have been hard for him to understand. Other times it has been as simple as football.

In June, Mitchell returned home from a football camp to find everything packed and the motor running. His family, which had lived in Lakewood for two years, was moving out of their three-bedroom apartment into a house in Los Alamitos.

“It was the first I heard of it,” Mitchell said. “I came back and was told we were leaving.”

Mitchell knew his stepfather, Dave Cunningham, was interested in moving him out of Mayfair’s attendance area. However, he said no one had told him they were moving so soon.

Mitchell didn’t even know the destination at first. He assumed they were going to another part of town. Instead, he found himself in Los Alamitos and his third high school in four years.

Still, it hasn’t been too hard on Mitchell. He has become used to moving.

Mitchell’s family has been on the go since he was in the fifth grade. In nine years, he has lived in five cities--a couple of them twice--and two states.

“It hasn’t been too tough. I’ve made a lot of great friends,” said Mitchell, a senior running back. “The only thing that’s tough is getting used to the teachers. They all use a different grading system.”

Unlike some of his moves, the family’s last one was purely for football.

As a junior at Mayfair, Mitchell rushed for 1,275 yards and scored 11 touchdowns. A nice season, but who noticed?

The Monsoons didn’t go to the playoffs, they didn’t have a winning record (3-7) and they finished at the bottom of the Suburban League standings. So Cunningham decided to seek a better situation for his son.

Cunningham wanted Mitchell to have the best for his senior year and the fact that this meant uprooting his family didn’t matter.

“Erik was gaining all those yards mainly on his own,” said Cunningham, a refrigerator mechanic for a soft drink company in Buena Park. “I’m not knocking Mayfair, but I wanted to see what Erik could do running behind a good offensive line.”

Cunningham first approached Kennedy Coach Mitch Olson, whose team was coming off a 8-3-1 season. Olson said Cunningham told him he was thinking of moving his family to another school district.

Olson told him the Fighting Irish already had a crowded backfield.

“If the guy’s kid was good, he was going to get to play,” Olson said. “But I felt a loyalty to the kids who had been in the program for four years. Most parents go overboard when they’re trying to sell you on their son. Still, the guy was very nice. He was just looking out for the best interest of the kid.”

Mayfair Coach Leon Ward doesn’t see it quite that way.

Ward, who also coached Mitchell on the track and field team, isn’t bitter. But he said he would have liked to have been better informed.

“I first heard rumors that Erik was leaving before last football season,” Ward said. “I talked with his parents and they guaranteed me they weren’t leaving.”

Mitchell even went through spring drills with the Mayfair team.

“We were preparing to build the whole offense around Erik,” Ward said.

But word soon reached him that Cunningham was talking with other coaches. This time, Cunningham didn’t deny it.

“We really didn’t start thinking about moving until the spring,” Cunningham said. “I kind of wanted to move nearer to my work. That’s why I went to Kennedy first.”

Said Ward: “I couldn’t agree with Mr. Cunningham. I didn’t think there was any reason to move. He was going to get a (college) scholarship even if he stayed. People were already looking at him.”

Oblivious to the situation was Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes, who said he’d never even heard of Erik Mitchell.

“One day this guy comes up to me and said his kid was going to be attending Los Alamitos,” Barnes said. “He said his kid was really fast and would be coming out for the football team.

“To be honest, I’m not into shopping kids around. If a kid is here legally, he’s welcome to come out for the team. If he’s great player, that’s fine. If he’s not, that’s fine, too.”

A couple of weeks later, Barnes was talking to a Mayfair assistant who was interested in moving to Los Alamitos as a freshman team coach. Barnes mentioned a player transferring from Mayfair who was supposed to be very fast.

“The guy said, ‘The only guy who’s very fast at Mayfair is Erik Mitchell,’ ” Barnes said. “I said, ‘That’s the kid.’ ”

The response on the other end of the telephone was more or less, “Holy Cow.”

Toward the end of the first quarter against Marina, Mitchell fielded a kickoff on the 10-yard line and returned it for a touchdown. For the first time, Barnes realized just how fast Mitchell could run.

“There were three Marina kids that had great angles at him,” said Barnes, whose team is ranked No.1 in Orange County. “They were coming straight toward me and I could see the panic in their eyes. They knew they weren’t going to get there in time to make the tackle. Erik was gone.”

Mitchell began playing football when he was in the third grade in Houston.

“All he talked about was football,” said Cora Cunningham, his mother. “He said he wanted to be the next Earl Campbell.”

Before Mitchell entered the fifth grade, his parents were divorced and Cora moved her family to Compton to live with her sister.

Mitchell’s mother went back to school and worked part-time. She found an apartment and moved her three children to Los Angeles.

“California was a real shock for me,” Erik said. “It was the first time I had ever run into gangs. I couldn’t wear anything red in my neighborhood because the Crips would be all over me.”

Red is the color of the Bloods, a rival gang.

Mitchell kept his distance and learned the rules. Still, in that neighborhood, even the innocent could have problems. Drive-by shootings occurred within a block of the Mitchell’s house.

When Mitchell was in the seventh grade, his mother married Cunningham, who had three sons. Cunningham tried to steer all the children away from gangs and drugs.

But he was always more concerned about Erik.

“I was scared that Erik would get involved in a fight with some gang member,” Cunningham said. “Erik is just the type of kid who won’t back down. That could have caused some serious problems.”

Mitchell spent his freshman year at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston to be closer to his father. But he came back a year later to more gang-related problems.

Just before his return, Jason Cunningham, Erik’s stepbrother, was stopped by gang members and questioned.

“They said they hadn’t seen him around before and wanted to know where he lived. That scared us,” Dave Cunningham said.

He moved the family to Mayfair a few weeks later.

“We were both working, so the kids had to stay at home alone a lot,” said Cora Cunningham, an electronic technician. “We just felt a lot better about leaving them at home in Mayfair.”

Mitchell excelled at Mayfair High School in football and in track and field.

He won the 200 meters at the Southern Section 2-A meet as a sophomore and might have won it as a junior had it not been for a hamstring injury.

But football has always been his favorite sport.

And football has helped Mitchell adjust. Quiet by nature, he said making friends has been easier because of his teammates.

In fact, the first person he met over the summer was Todd Gragnano, Los Alamitos’ quarterback. The two became close friends over the summer, going to movies and parties together.

“Todd was a transfer from out of the area, so he understood what Erik was going through,” Barnes said. “Erik was real nervous at first. He didn’t say a lot and was having problems catching the football. I think Todd helped him over the rough spots.”

Barnes said Mitchell was still pressing when the season began. Although he returned a kickoff for a touchdown, Mitchell gained only 29 yards rushing.

Still, behind Gragnano’s passing, the Griffins won, 42-22.

“During the game, I pulled Erik aside and told him, ‘We’ve scored that many points and you really haven’t done anything yet,’ ” Barnes said. “Just relax and play. We don’t need you to do everything.”

Mitchell relaxed last week and tore up the Servite defense.

“There were kids who came up to tackle him, but Erik wasn’t there anymore,” Barnes said. “He’s that fast.”