JC NOTES : High-Flying Southwest Football Team Tries to Claw Back After 1st Loss

Until last week, L.A. Southwest’s football team was having a season that could have been labeled too good to be true.

A tie against a tough Bakersfield club was the closest thing to a loss for the fierce Cougars, who are having their best season ever. Going into last week’s contest at Ventura, they were ranked eighth in the state with a prime opportunity of taking over the No. 1 spot in the Western State Conference.

Instead, Southwest returned from its lengthy Ventura trip with a 33-23 loss to the undefeated Pirates. That means the Cougars remain in second place in the WSC Northern Division with a 4-1-1 record (5-1-1 overall).

Last year Southwest beat Ventura, 21-18, and the teams tied for fourth place in the Northern Division. Southwest went 4-5 in the conference and 5-5 overall.

This time a series of Southwest errors and a sloppy performance from quarterback Craig Manigo helped the Pirates (6-0, 7-0) win and remain on top of the 12-member conference, which has four teams ranked in the state’s top 20.

“We were our worst enemy,” said Southwest Coach Henry Washington. “Craig (Manigo) had a horrible outing and we had quite a few penalties. It just wasn’t a good night for us.

“The kids were really hurt because they knew they lost because of mistakes and not because Ventura was the better team.”

Manigo completed 27 of 45 passes for 275 yards and three touchdowns, but the freshman from Leuzinger High committed four of the Cougars’ five fumbles and threw five interceptions.

Southwest’s loss leaves Bakersfield (4-0-2, 5-0-2) the only other undefeated team in the conference. The Renegades are the WSC Southern Division’s first-place club. Their other tie came against Glendale.

Besides El Camino, Riverside is the only undefeated team in the 16-member Mission Conference. The Tigers, ranked No. 2 in the state, are in first place in the Central Division with a 6-0 league record (7-0 overall). The No. 1 Warriors lead the Northern Division with the same mark.

Unlike El Camino, Riverside racks up most of its yards running. The Tigers are the league’s best rushing team with 1,875 yards for the season. Running back Daryl McChristian leads the conference with 1,131 yards on 144 carries in seven games. The 5-foot-10, 180-pound sophomore gained a season-high 264 yards on 19 carries in last week’s victory over Saddleback.

Don Weems doesn’t mean to jump the gun, but the first-year Harbor football coach is looking ahead. You can’t blame the guy since his team is young, inexperienced and lacks depth.

“The bright spot on this team is the number of freshmen we have,” he said. “The biggest improvement is going to come after this season when they get into the weight room and prepare for next season.”

The Seahawks are 2-5 (1-5 in the WSC) after last week’s 36-point loss to Glendale in which they gave up 606 yards. Harbor has suffered three shutouts (Bakersfield, L.A. Valley and Moorpark) due in great part to exhaustion.

The Seahawks look run-down and overworked, and there’s a good reason. They have only 40 players (36 of them freshmen), which means opponents outnumber them by about 30 athletes.

“There’s no doubt,” Weems said, “that at this point every team is fatigued, but we’re really fatigued. These kids play twice as hard and they practice twice as hard.

“The important thing is that these kids have hung in there and they’re trying to get better. Our success is obviously not measured in win-losses.”

Harbor is the last-place team in the WSC Northern Division, but at least the Seahawks aren’t the cellar team of the conference. The Southern Division has two clubs with worse records and one, L.A. Pierce, with the same mark.

Compton and West L.A. are winless. Both are 0-6 in the WSC and 0-7 overall. Harbor’s only league victory was a 49-15 triumph over West L.A.

The veteran prevailed at the South Coast Conference meet last Tuesday. Diana Tracy, a 36-year old road racer, led El Camino’s cross-country team with a second-place finish in the five-team championship race.

Tracy finished the flat three-mile course at Cal State Dominguez Hills in 18:01 and the Warriors placed second (42) to conference powerhouse Mt. San Antonio College (19). Mt. Sac freshman Louise Ronnerman won in 17:42.

Shena Mills finished second (19:02) for the Warriors (seventh overall) and Carla Swaim, who has led the team all season, placed third (19:06) and eighth overall.

The sophomore appeared rusty because flu kept her inactive for a week and a half before the meet. Her last race was the Irvine Invitational on Oct 6.

“I think she may have lost her sharpness,” said Coach Dean Lofgren, “because it had been three weeks since she competed. She was fit; she just wasn’t very sharp.”

That should change by Nov. 11 when Swaim, Tracy and Mills compete in the Southern California Regional meet at Mt. Sac. The top 15 runners in that meet will go to the state championships at Fresno on Nov. 18.

Two members of the men’s team will also compete on the hilly Mt. Sac course. David Haskell (20:49) and Phil DeMontigny (20:53) finished sixth and seventh overall as the Warriors’ top runners in the four-mile SCC race.