TODAY’S PREP FOOTBALL GAMES : Coaches Barnett, Bresnahan Are Neighborhood Rivals Once Again : Familiar Foes: The Trabuco Hills and Laguna Hills coaches went to Lakewood High in the 1960s, but have been opponents many times since.

Jim Barnett and Steve Bresnahan both grew up in Lakewood, one of the communities some Los Angeles families were drawn to in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.

Twenty-five years later, Barnett and Bresnahan have both ended up in the Mission Viejo area, a suburban haven of another generation.

Barnett, Trabuco Hills High football coach, and Bresnahan, Laguna Hills football coach, will face each other tonight at 7:30. They met once before in the Pacific Coast League--Trabuco Hills won last year, 35-6, and went on to win the Southern Section Division VIII championship.

But the coaches’ relationship goes back 25 years.

Both went to Lakewood High School, Barnett graduating in 1964 and Bresnahan in 1968.

“I met Jim my sophomore year in high school,” Bresnahan said. “Jim was at Long Beach State, and I used to go see him play football and we’d go to some games together.”

Barnett graduated from Cal State Long Beach and became an assistant football coach at Lakewood in 1968.

Bresnahan was captain of the football team that year.

Barnett was an assistant coach at Wilson High from 1971-76, then an assistant at Long Beach Poly for four years. In 1980, he took over as head coach when Gene Noji left to become coach at Woodbridge.

Barnett and Bresnahan never played football against each other. But their teams did when Bresnahan coached at Lakewood High and Barnett coached at Poly. And each achieved commendable success. Poly made the CIF semifinals four out of five years; Lakewood won two league co-championships in four seasons.

Bresnahan went on to an assistant coaching job at Cal State Long Beach in 1984, and a year later, he and Barnett were candidates for the head coaching job at Trabuco Hills before Barnett was hired.

But the career rivalry was nothing new, either. “We both applied for a coaching job in Riverside in the mid-70s, and neither of us got it,” Barnett said. “I applied for the Long Beach State job that he got.”

After four years at Long Beach, Bresnahan took the job at Laguna Hills, which had a 4-36 record the four previous years, including 0-10 in 1987. In his first year, the Hawks were 2-8, while Barnett led the Mustangs to the first Division VIII title in the school’s brief history, beating Noji in the final.

Now Barnett and Bresnahan meet again.

“It’s fun,” Barnett said of playing Bresnahan’s team. “It keeps football exciting. High school football should be fun for kids, but you have to win to make it fun.”

Bresnahan said he is too busy rebuilding his team to think about the opposing coach.

“We’re at the point where it doesn’t matter who we play,” he said. “We’re just trying to improve from the ground up.

“I’d like to think there could be a big rivalry between our two schools, but we’re still about two or three years away from being able to compete on a consistent basis. “

Now the rivalry’s location has shifted to South County and communities with life styles that the two compare to that of Lakewood 20 to 30 years ago.

“We love it here,” said Bresnahan’s wife, Kathy. “We’d never move.”

Laguna Hills, which has never won the Pacific Coast championship in the league’s four-year existence, faces its toughest challenge in Trabuco Hills.

“I don’t think there is any question that the team to beat is Trabuco Hills,” Bresnahan said. “Not to downplay Orange and Laguna Beach, because every team we play, we will have to play our best to win. We are not the type of team that can play poorly and win.”

Laguna Hills is the type of team that can run, though.

Fullback Marwan Saba (130 carries for 588 yards) is the team’s leading rusher. Senior tailback Darrin Chapman and sophomore Dave Webber are the other backs, and quarterback Mark Wells rushed for 95 yards in the victory over Woodbridge.

Though Trabuco Hills and its pass-dominated offense is favored, Barnett is still wary of his old nemesis. He knows what Bresnahan is capable of from their days coaching against one another in the Moore League.

“He’s really turned the Laguna Hills program around,” Barnett said. “Laguna Hills has some very good athletes. Our concern is stopping their running game. Both of those kids (Saba and Chapman) are hard runners. I think that will be the key for us.”

In other games:

Servite (3-4, 1-0) vs. St. Paul (2-5, 0-1)--After losing four in a row, Servite regrouped with a victory at Alemany two weeks ago and jelled with last week’s 35-13 Angelus League victory over Bishop Montgomery. The Friars will see how solid they really are at 5:30 today in their homecoming against St. Paul at Gahr High.

Servite is led by quarterback Rob Walker, who has completed 108 of 168 passes for 1,456 yards and seven touchdowns. Kent Weiss is the team’s leading rusher with 73 carries for 489 yards and nine touchdowns.

Capistrano Valley (7-0, 2-0) at Irvine (3-4, 1-1)--Quarterback Tony Solliday will lead undefeated Capistrano Valley against Irvine in a South Coast League game at Irvine at 7:30 tonight. Solliday has completed almost 60% of his passes for 1,166 yards, nine touchdowns and only one interception.