Running for Cover : Montclair Prep Fails to Win Over Its Critics Despite Unbeaten Record

The final gun sounded and George Giannini, victorious again, headed to midfield for the traditional postgame handshake between coaches.

Giannini’s Montclair Prep team had just soundly defeated St. Genevieve, 55-14.

St. Genevieve Coach Mark Lovett was surly as he approached Giannini. He felt that the Montclair Prep coach was guilty of running up the score. Lovett was aware of the Mountie reputation: Results such as a 61-0 win over Brethren and a 37-0 win over Serrano had made Giannini a less-than-popular figure among the coaching fraternity.

On this night last month, with the score 42-7 in the first half, Giannini had continued to play star running back Derek Sparks. A 45-yard scoring run by the junior had made the score 49-7 in the second quarter. That proved to be the final straw for Lovett. As a result, what awaited Giannini at midfield was not so much a handshake as a takedown.

“He was a little brusque, shall we say,” Giannini remembers.

And yet, when Giannini turned around from the icy reception to head back and mingle with his coaches, friends and parents of players, he received little in the way of back-slapping accolades.

Why in the world, parents wondered, did you pull Derek Sparks early in the third quarter? Why are you punishing him, making him sit out, just because the other team isn’t as good as we are?

Giannini was dumbfounded.

He had pulled Sparks early, hoping to salvage his reputation and relationship with coaches everywhere, only to hear from Lovett that it wasn’t early enough. He then heard from parents that reducing a 17-year-old’s playing time was also unfair.

He stood at Valley College that Friday night, a portrait in frustration. Behind him stood a snarling Lovett, a symbolic figure of the angry coaches Giannini had alienated in just five games. In front of him stood the parents, symbolic figures of his players’ aspirations. “I can’t win,” Giannini thought to himself. “I just can’t win.”

Like the traditional coin toss before each game, there have been two sides to the story of Montclair Prep football in 1989. And each has been tugging at Giannini throughout a season that has been both exhilarating and trying.

The Mounties and Giannini, 38, stand in the eye of a storm. The Mounties run up the score, opposing coaches cry. Their statistics and record are deceiving, skeptics cry. The Mounties play a bunch of cream puffs.

In addition, they accuse Montclair Prep of recruiting its talent and bending rules to get athletes into school.

There have been two Southern Section investigations in the past four years, but Montclair Prep was exonerated both times.

The Mounties are 10-0, Alpha League champions and the top-seeded team in the Division IX playoffs. But will Giannini be able to enjoy his success?

Giannini, 38, is a soft-spoken, affable man who is in his second year at the school after returning from a coaching stint in Colorado. Prior to that, he was coach at Montclair Prep for nine years.

Never before, however, has he encountered such turmoil--or such resounding success.

RECRUITING

The most serious, and the most controversial, aspect of Montclair Prep’s season has been the accusations of recruiting. When Sparks, the state’s sophomore player of the year last season at Banning High, transferred last spring, eyebrows were raised among rival coaches.

With Sparks came his cousin from Texas, Leland, who starts at quarterback. Tight end Jason Blatt transferred from Chatsworth. Such activity is not uncommon at a private school. But when the activity benefits the football program, other coaches go on the attack.

“You know, it kind of bugs me that every year they get 10 to 12 athletes that weren’t there the year before,” says Mike Plaisance, coach at Alpha League rival Village Christian. “As far as I’m concerned, Montclair Prep is the best team money can buy.”

Montclair Prep takes harsh criticism in stride. Principal V. E. Simpson heard it before when Montclair Prep was the subject of a Southern Section investigation in 1985 that cleared the school of all wrongdoing. The Southern Section investigated last month and again Montclair Prep was given a clean bill of health.

All that doesn’t surprise John Hazelton, who was coach at Montclair Prep in 1985 during the first investigation and is currently the defensive coordinator. His answer to the charges is similar to that which seems to be Montclair Prep’s official stance.

“If you’re a good football coach,” Hazelton says, “and have the bonus of being at a great school like Montclair Prep, people find out where you are. George and I never leave the campus. We sit there and people say, ‘Hey, what do we have to do to get into Montclair Prep?’ ”

Simpson claims that the football team’s success has resulted in a flood of applications to the school and defends the school’s integrity. “I’m very upset at the snide remarks I’ve heard made about our kids,” he says.

Giannini has adopted a tone of resignation about the recruiting allegations.

“People are gonna say what they’re gonna say. And I can’t change their thinking,” he says. “I can say it until I’m blue in the face and if people are still going to make their accusations, what can I tell you about it?”

BULLY ON THE BLOCK

But the cries of the critics do not end with recruiting charges. This season has seen the birth of Montclair Prep’s new-found reputation as bully. The incriminating evidence: 61-0 over Brethren, 55-0 over Maranatha, 54-0 over Marshall Fundamental, 55-14 over St. Genevieve, and 37-0 over Serrano.

But are those scores more the result of superior talent or bloodthirsty coaching tactics? Giannini insists that he has never tried to run up a score, but other coaches and evidence suggest otherwise:

* In the opener against Serrano, Giannini left his first-string backfield in with a 30-0 lead, and Sparks scored with less than a minute to play.

“You keep your No. 1 tailback in the game when it’s 30-0 in the fourth quarter,” Serrano Coach Gary Weiberg said. “That’s not too classy.”

* With the score 54-0 against Brethren, Giannini ran Sparks on a dive play. Sparks went 90 yards with 1:24 remaining to account for the final score.

* Against St. Genevieve, Sparks ran for a touchdown with his team leading, 42-7, in the first half. Said Lovett: “(Giannini) should say to himself that his starters can play a half. If I had that kind of talent, I would definitely call the dogs off.”

Giannini has grown sensitive to such criticism. In Alpha League blowouts against badly outclassed Marshall Fundamental and Maranatha, he agreed to play the second half with a running clock. He also has started working in substitute quarterbacks and running backs for his stars.

“I have never tried to run up a score,” Giannini insists. “I feel bad at how it’s turned out. In fact, those games have caused me some problems with parents. They want to know why I take the first string out so soon.”

If Giannini puts the subs in at halftime, he gets heat from the fans and puppy-dog looks from his sidelined players. And he points out that the varsity roster includes just 26 players; fielding a second team is difficult.

Still, the memories of a blowout linger with other coaches. Many vow that what goes around, comes around. And Giannini insists that he is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

“It’s so hard to coach down because you never want to tell your kids not to go 100%,” he says. “Against Brethren, Derek goes 90 yards on a dive. And I felt real bad about it because to the other coach, it looked bad. And all I’m doing is taking my second-string tailback (Sparks starts at fullback) and running him into the line.”

Simpson has advised the coaches and players that perhaps it might be best to ease up on outmanned opponents.

“I asked some of our players, ‘If a senior beat up a seventh-grader, would you have any respect for that senior?’ And they, of course, said no,” Simpson says. “Well that’s what it’s like when we’re playing a team that is weak.”

Giannini has heeded that message, if belatedly. Now, in a blowout, one can see Cardell Henderson and Greg Jones in the familiar slots of Sparks and Michael Jones, the other star running back.

Still, will other coaches be willing to forgive this season’s perceived transgressions?

In an attempt to expedite the healing process, Giannini is now fond of saying, “There are certain things called sportsmanship, you know.”

Many find that comment dripping with irony.

SOFT SCHEDULE

Sportsmanship has come into question partly because of Montclair Prep’s weak schedule.

The slate is less than impressive, including nonleague teams St. Genevieve, a Division VII doormat; Serrano, a fellow Division IX team; Simi Valley, a Division II team that recently won its first game in two years, and Brethren, a 2-7 Division IX team.

Montclair Prep outscored those teams, 181-20, but also played Bassett, a Division V playoff team that features Marshawn Thompson, one of the state’s leading rushers and a touted college prospect. The Mounties hammered Thompson, holding him to 66 yards, and defeated Bassett, 21-0.

Privately, however, coaches of some of the better teams in the Valley longing for a shot at the Mounties have scoffed at the lineup of patsies.

Of course, there is nothing Montclair Prep can do about its Division IX status. At least not this season. And none of that anti-Mountie talk fazes the players. At least not outwardly.

“It’s been a sweet 10-0 season,” quarterback Leland Sparks says. “We ignore it,” adds Jones, who has rushed for 1,360 yards, second in the Valley to Derek Sparks’ 1,603. “We don’t care what anybody writes or prints or says about us.”

Montclair Prep is a Division IX team with Division I talent. Both Sparks and Jones are among the top runners in the state. Lineman Donovan Roy is, at least by the estimation of his coaching staff, inviting comparisons to Banning lineman Bob Whitfield, currently at Stanford. But when players of that caliber suit up for Montclair Prep, they are bound by contract to play in the Alpha League--a league that rarely sends athletes onto college prominence.

Montclair Prep has been the exception. Players such as Toi Cook, now with the New Orleans Saints, and Torey Lovullo, now with the Detroit Tigers, have given Montclair Prep a reputation as an athletic power.

Says one rival coach: “Montclair Prep sells (college athletics) as a recruiting tool.”

Giannini acknowledges the criticism of his schedule and plans to improve it next season.

“I would like to play Notre Dame (in 1990), but they don’t have an opening,” he says. “We talked to Alemany. Maybe Crespi. We would like to play a good, rated Valley team in Bassett’s place.”

Until it does, some say, Montclair Prep’s luster as a football team will continue to be tarnished. Not to the Mounties, however.

“In two years, are (my players) going to remember if we played Chaminade or not?” Giannini says. “I’m not saying we should sneak out with an easy schedule. But you can’t pound your chest and let your ego get involved and say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna take on the world ‘cause we’re great.’

“My point is, we’re here to win a Division IX championship. That’s what our goal is. Everything else is nice, but it’s not paramount in our thinking.”

“These are just young kids that we’re coaching who should be happy at what they’ve accomplished. No matter who it’s against.”

In the end, has this season been worthwhile for Giannini and the school? To be sure, part of that answer will hinge on the Mounties’ success in the playoffs. But to a certain extent, the verdict is in.

“We get to go out on that practice field with 26 great kids that we love and have a good time coaching,” Hazelton says. “And after Friday night, win, lose or draw, I’m going to be sitting . . . across from George and we’ll have a beer in front of us and a pizza will come shortly thereafter.

“That’s what we’re in it for. We have fun.”

Giannini, too, prizes his moments in the coaching arena. And he’s trying hard to make this year no different from any other. Despite the fact that it is, indeed, most unusual.

But did he know what he was getting into? Giannini pauses and says with conviction, “We hoped to get into this.”