PREP REVIEW : For Openers, Capistrano Valley Hopes to End Spell of Bad Luck

Capistrano Valley High School has earned the top seeding in the Division III football playoffs and is expected to be named Orange County’s mythical champion today by virtue of its 22-21 South Coast League victory over El Toro last week.

Now, the question is: Can Capistrano Valley end a playoff jinx in which it has lost in the first round in six of the past seven years?

Capistrano Valley (10-0) opens the playoffs Friday by playing host to Burbank Burroughs. If the Cougars win, it will be the first time they have won an opening-round playoff game since defeating Los Altos, 30-24, in 1985.

El Modena has beaten Capistrano Valley three times in the first round since 1984, and the Cougars have been eliminated in the opening round six times since they moved to the Southern Section’s most competitive division in 1982.

As expected, El Toro (9-1) was seeded second in the division and will play host to Gahr (7-3) Friday night at Irvine High School. Los Alamitos (9-1) was seeded third and defending champion Paramount (9-1) was seeded fourth.

Dana Hills (7-3), the fourth-place team in the South Coast League, received the at-large entry over Lynwood (5-5) of the San Gabriel Valley League. Dana Hills’ losses were to Capistrano Valley, El Toro and Mission Viejo.

“Is there any tougher division than this?” said Bob Johnson, El Toro coach. “There are six or seven teams who have a legitimate shot at winning the championship, but some of those teams could also get beat in the first round.”

John Barnes, who has led Los Alamitos to the division finals the past two years, says the 16-team field is one of the strongest since the division was formed in 1977.

“This division is stronger than Division I,” Barnes said. “There’s some real good offensive teams. There’s going to be a lot of scoring.”

The most attractive first-round game matches Santa Ana (8-2) against Loara (8-1-1) at Western High. The game features two standout running backs--Coy Collins of Loara and Garner Hicks of Santa Ana--and two of the county’s winningest coaches--Herb Hill of Loara and Dick Hill of Santa Ana.

Dave White, Edison football coach, said he has had problems explaining to his players how the league principals declared Edison (5-0) co-champion with Ocean View (4-1) in the Sunset League after Huntington Beach’s forfeitures for starting an ineligible player.

But White quickly analyzed the Division I pairings and said, “There’s one team (Fontana) up here, and then 10 more who could break through with some breaks and get to the final.”

Top-seeded Fontana (10-0) is the only undefeated team in the division and will play host to Fountain Valley (5-5) in the opening round. Fountain Valley qualified for the playoffs when Huntington Beach had to forfeit its victories.

“Fontana is the team to beat because of its physical style of play and great winning tradition,” said Mike Milner, Fountain Valley coach. Fontana defeated Fountain Valley, 21-0, in the 1987 championship at Anaheim Stadium.

Mater Dei, winners of six of its past seven games, travels to the University of Redlands Friday to play Redlands. Coach Bruce Rollinson isn’t happy about the long trip.

“I thought with the degree of difficulty of our schedule and by winning six of our last seven games that we would have gotten a game in the county,” Rollinson said.

The most interesting first-round game matches Ocean View (7-3) against San Gorgonio (7-3) at Huntington Beach High.

Karl Gaytan, former Ocean View coach, led San Gorgonio to a third-place finish in his first year.

“I was thinking the weight room that I helped to build at Ocean View could be the difference in the game,” Gaytan said. “I understand their line is big and strong.”

Howard Isom, Ocean View coach, was the defensive coordinator under Gaytan in 1985. Isom led Ocean View to its first league championship since the school opened in 1976.

“Huntington Beach’s forfeitures took some of the luster off being in the playoffs,” Isom said. “I really feel for their kids.”

Sunny Hills and Estancia, two of the county’s four teams with 10-0 records, are seeded first and second, respectively, in Division VI, and defending champion Corona del Mar (7-3) received the at-large entry.

Corona del Mar plays fourth-seeded Pacifica (8-1-1) in a rematch of last year’s semifinal game that Corona del Mar won, 14-7.

“It was one of the best high school games I’ve been involved in,” said Bill Craven, Pacifica coach. “We had the ball on their eight-yard line when the game ended.”

Valencia, which has advanced to three consecutive championship games, was unseeded for the first time since 1985 when it shared the title with Western. Valencia was seeded first in 1988 and 1986 and second in 1987 and 1984, but Coach Mike Marrujo isn’t concerned about being unseeded in 1989.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re seeded, just as long as you get to the final game,” he said. “Once we lost the coin flip to Savanna, I knew we wouldn’t be seeded this year.”

Newport Harbor (8-2) plays third-seeded Glenn (9-1) at La Mirada High. Glenn won the Suburban League championship, its first title since 1970.

Tom Meiss, first-year coach at Orange, had a good idea of what to expect in Division VIII after his team qualified for the playoffs for only the second time this decade.

“The schools are so spread out, you have to get on the phone to find out about them, and then order a bus to play them,” he said.

But Orange (7-2-1) drew a home game against Atascadero (8-2). When Meiss learned that Santa Ana Stadium was vacant, he jumped at the opportunity to play there.

“Maybe Atascadero will get fatigued on the bus ride coming down here,” Meiss said.

Defending champion Trabuco Hills (9-1) was seeded second behind Yucaipa (10-0) in the division. Trabuco Hills plays host to an at-large entry, Riverside Notre Dame (7-3), Friday at Mission Viejo High.

Whittier Christian (10-0) is seeded second in Division IX behind Montclair Prep (10-0) and will play host to Leffingwell Christian (3-5) Friday night at Whittier College.

Running back Ron Papazian has scored 29 touchdowns for Whittier Christian and needs four in the playoffs to break the county mark of 32 set in 1982 by Jim Farrell of Esperanza.

Hot heats: How hot was it at the Southern Section cross-country preliminaries Friday at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut?

In one heat of the girls’ 1-A division, Angela Richardson of Beaumont was in fourth place when she hit the air strip portion of the course, about 200 yards from the finish line. Had she been able to hold onto fourth, Richardson would have qualified for Saturday’s finals. But Richardson, overcome by the temperatures in the 90s, walked the final 100 yards and placed 10th. Said meet announcer Doug Speck: “People walking the air strip? I’d say that sort of symbolizes the day.”

Edison’s Shelley Taylor won her heat in the fastest time for a county girl, 18:30. University’s Tanja Brix, second in 18:48, and Villa Park’s Susannah Thrasher, third in 19:23, stayed with Taylor through the first 1 1/2 miles. But Taylor took over going up Poop Out hill, pulling away with what appeared to be little effort.

Last year as a freshman, Taylor finished fourth in the Southern Section finals. This year, she is the overwhelming favorite, and it’s not something Taylor likes to hear.

“I don’t like to say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna win,’ or something like that,” Taylor said. “When people say, ‘Oh, don’t worry Shelley, of course, you’ll win, you always do!’ That makes me real mad. . . . I’m wearing myself out. I expect so much from myself. I try so hard to please everyone.”

Woodbridge, Orange County’s top-ranked girls’ cross-country team and a perennial county power, dominated its 2-A heat as its top five finished third, fifth, seventh, ninth and 10th to win, with 34 points. The Warriors managed without two of their best runners, Kaci Keffer (flu) and Kim Tardif (foot injury). Katie Durham, their No. 4 runner, competed despite a severe case of shin splints and finished 10th.

“This is by far the finest team we’ve ever had,” Woodbridge Coach George Varvas said. “We have so much depth. We have eight quality runners, so we can really cover ourselves if someone has a bad race or is hurt.”

In this week’s finals, Woodbridge again will face Agoura, the defending state champion, which won its heat with 28 points.

With the elimination of Corona del Mar’s boys’ team and Newport Harbor’s girls’ team in the preliminaries, much was said about the Southern Section’s playoff system in cross-country, and little of it was good.

Although both teams are the defending state champions in the medium schools division--and both are ranked among the top five in the state--neither will be able to defend their titles Nov. 25 at Fresno. This has less to do with how the teams ran than it does with the Southern Section’s current playoff system.

In Southern Section competition, both Newport Harbor and Corona del Mar, which have fewer than 1,300 students, compete in the 4-A division with schools up to twice their size. It’s not until the state meet--where schools compete in one of three divisions based on enrollment--that they’ve been able to compete against schools of their size.

Next year, however, teams will enter Southern Section playoffs in divisions based on enrollment--the same enrollment-based divisions as they’ll compete in at the state meet. This is similar to the system basketball adopted last year.

To be sure, it’ll offer some relief to the smaller schools.