High School’s Heroes Thrown for a Loss : Regulations: Huntington Beach’s Oilers turned around 23 years of football frustration, then forfeited a playoff shot because a tackle had been ineligible. A protest will be followed by a court petition.

For much of the last quarter-century, the Huntington Beach High School Oilers football team has been the punching bag of the Sunset League, routinely pummeled by bigger and stronger rivals.

This year was different. All season, the Oilers played football with a vengeance, waylaying eight of their 10 opponents and winning a shot at the playoffs--and the regional title.

The team was giddily looking forward to December, when the coveted orange-and-black Sunset championship patches would be presented at an awards banquet and the players could have them stitched onto their lettermen’s jackets.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Just 48 hours after defeating Fountain Valley High School in their regular-season closer Thursday, the Oilers were disqualified from the playoffs and had all their 1989 wins nullified. The California Interscholastic Federation had discovered that the team inadvertently used an ineligible player for the entire season.

“Everyone on the team just wanted the Sunset patch all year long,” Oilers starting quarterback Jeff Gibson said. “And then it was like all of a sudden it was ripped off our jackets.”

The Sunset League principals, acting on behalf of the CIF, took the disciplinary action after learning that starting right tackle David Roman did not live with a parent or guardian within the school’s attendance area. Failure to do so is a violation of CIF bylaws.

Roman, who transferred from Maryland, has in fact lived in Huntington Beach since enrolling at Huntington Beach High on Aug. 16. But he has lived with an older brother. Their mother remained in Maryland, trying to sell their home.

The mother filed a declaration of residency in August, saying that her son would live with his brother while she tried to sell their old house. The Huntington Beach High administration, which checks eligibility of students, failed to check back with her, figuring that she had moved to the West Coast already, Principal Gary Ernst said Saturday.

The omission was discovered when David, 17, applied last week to the CIF for another year of eligibility.

Sunday night, a candlelight rally for the Oilers was held in front of Huntington Beach High. About 500 students, teachers and parents, holding candles and orange-and-black balloons, turned out to support the team, which had racked up the school’s best varsity football season in 23 years.

Waving banners and placards with such slogans as, “You’re Still Number One in Our Hearts,” the demonstrators drew supportive honks from drivers on Main Street. The school band played the Oilers’ fight song and the national anthem.

“It’s kind of a bummer that we got messed up for something that has nothing to do with football,” said starting left tackle Kevin McAntinch, 17.

Remo Bellamy, president of the Huntington Beach High Football Boosters Club, told the crowd, “Everyone here knows who No. 1 is,” to cheers of “Yeah!” from students.

Earlier Sunday, Bellamy had predicted that the team’s sudden disqualification would have a lasting, damaging effect on the players.

“They have just scarred 52 kids mentally--for life,” he said. “There are some kids who are wondering why they should even finish school now. It was totally unjust and, mentally, some of these kids are destroyed.”

The Boosters Club, Bellamy added, has hired an attorney to file a petition in Orange County Superior Court today, seeking to reinstate the Oilers’ record and their playoff eligibility status.

The first round of the playoffs is scheduled to begin Friday. The playoffs take a month, culminating in a Southern Section Division I championship game at Anaheim Stadium.

CIF officials were not available for comment Sunday.

Ken Gibson, father of the quarterback, said the disqualification is particularly difficult because the team has rarely made it into playoff contention, unlike such traditional league powerhouses as Edison and Fountain Valley high schools; Fountain Valley won the Division I title last year.

“We finally make it, and then someone steals it from us,” said Gibson, 49, a contractor. “You try not to say the world is unfair, but you wonder what you’ve done wrong.”

Gibson’s son, a senior, said team members are trying to console each other, but it is not easy.

“This was our best record in 23 years, and everybody was looking forward to the playoffs,” Gibson said. “We had the potential to go all the way. I mean, everyone was talking about what it would be like playing in Anaheim Stadium this year.”

The quarterback added that one of the players’ main concerns now is letting David Roman know they do not blame him.

But in an interview Sunday, Roman said he could not help feeling responsible--even though the error was unintentional. Several Oilers had the potential to be named named All-CIF during the playoffs, he said, enhancing their recruitment chances.

At the rally, Roman told fellow students that the real blame should fall on the school administration for failing to check on his eligibility.

“I came to school, and the principal gave me papers,” Roman said. “They said I was ready.”

Coach George Pascoe, who turned the Oilers around from a 2-8 record in 1988 to this year’s 8-2, said Roman’s ineligibility was an innocent error and that neither coaches nor players are assigning blame.

“There is no blame to be placed on anyone,” Pascoe said. “It’s a tragic error. You’ve got to play within the rules, and I guess we didn’t.”

Pascoe tried to find solace in knowing that the team’s victories this year really happened, contrary to what it now says in the record book.

“I’ve got game films in my office that we will be able to share the rest of our lives that no one can take away,” Pascoe said. “I mean, we won eight ballgames, and the kids should be really proud of that.”