Prep Review : Marina Celebrates End of Long Dry Spell

After 18 games covering parts of three seasons, Marina High School finally won a football game.

The last Viking victory came in their final nonleague game of the 1987 season. After beating Millikan, 26-25, Marina dropped 18 in a row, including its first three this season. But Thursday night, Marina defeated Lakewood, 17-7, at Westminster High to end the streak, which had been the longest current stretch in Orange County football.

“We knew it was going to come, we didn’t know when,” Marina Coach John Seeley said during a lull in the celebrating Friday afternoon. “Our kids never really thought about the losing streak. Everything has been a new approach this year. There’s a new attitude.”

Still, the Marina players celebrated heartily.

“They thought they won the Super Bowl,” Seeley said. “As far as our program is concerned, it was a big win.”

It might have been biggest to Darren Fields, David McCloud and David Schultz, three seniors who have played on the varsity since they were sophomores.

Schultz completed 16 of 28 passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns, and Fields caught 11 passes for 160 yards and one touchdown.

“It probably meant more to them than to some of the other kids,” said Seeley, in his first season as Marina coach.

“Sometimes I’ve coached teams where they haven’t had the talent and still won. That wasn’t so here. There was just a missing ingredient. We haven’t turned the corner yet. We’re still struggling, but we’re on our way.”

Seeley is encouraged by the turnout for his lower-level teams. The sophomores (3-0) have 48 players on the roster, 20 more than last season.

“I think we’ve got the ball rolling,” he said. “I felt that at the beginning of the season. Things have really improved in our football program.

“I see us getting better each week. We’ve finally come to our first goal, which is to get a victory. Now we need to work on getting to the playoffs.”

And the official count is . . . low: The Orange County Officials Assn. has lost about 40 to 50 of its members this year and has had problems getting all the football games assigned, according to Scott Cathcart, the Southern Section director of media relations.

“Actually, throughout (the Southern Section), the numbers of officials are down,” said Cathcart, who has been officiating for the past six years. “And it’s across the board, in all sports.”

He said he believes there is no particular cause, but that the numbers seem to run in cycles over the years. The money, he said, doesn’t seem to be a complaint.

For example, a referee’s fee for a night varsity football game is $45 (day games are $42). Water polo officials earn $27 for a day game and $50 for a night tripleheader. Volleyball officials earn $32 for a day match and $60 for a night doubleheader.

“We need the schools and the coaches to help recruit graduating seniors who have been involved in athletics to get them interested in officiating,” Cathcart said. “It can be a very good avocation for anybody who’s into sports.”

Quotebook: Tim Devaney, Sunny Hills football coach, took his team to Edmonton, Canada, last week to play a game he thought was football. Well, it was, but with a twist.

Of the longer, wider Canadian field, Devaney said: “The field was so big, we needed binoculars on the sideline just to see where the ball was.”

Of the “single,” which awards a team a point if it can prevent an opponent from returning a kick out of its end zone, he said: “We were winning, 21-0, and Brian Pizula kicked the ball into the end zone. I looked up and it was 22-0. I didn’t know what was going on, but I liked it.”

Sunny Hills defeated La Zerte High, 51-0.

Division won?: Through four weeks of nonleague play, Orange County’s Division I teams aren’t playing like top-level teams. Division I teams are only 9-14 against the lower division.

And it took two victories in three tries last week to improve that much.

In the second week, Division I team were only 1-6 against lower-division teams.

Mater Dei lost to Tustin (Division VI), Servite lost to Los Alamitos (Division III), Fountain Valley lost to El Toro (Division III), Edison lost to Capistrano Valley (Division III), Ocean View lost to Newport Harbor (Division VI) and Marina lost to Corona del Mar (Division VI).

Huntington Beach, which defeated Pacifica (Division VI), was the only Division I team to beat a lower-division team.

Much of this has to do with the growth of population and enrollment in the South County, where Division III schools such as Capistrano Valley, El Toro and Mission Viejo have been the most consistent winners in the 1980s.

Prep Notes

Jerry Jelnick, Corona del Mar athletic director, is accepting applications for a varsity baseball coach with the possibility of a teaching position. Interested applicants can call Jelnick at 760-3315. . . . The fall general meeting of the Orange County Athletic Directors’ Assn. is scheduled for Oct. 25 at the Anaheim Stadium Club. The athletic directors’ board members will meet Oct. 11 at the Sequoia Athletic Club in Buena Park.