Back From Nowhere : Two-Way Standout Anderson One Big Reason for El Camino Real’s Revival After Winless Years
In football, an eight-man front is to a running back what the Berlin Wall once was to East Germans. Sure, someday a guy might be able to get around, over or through it, but you better have the wheels to make it to the other side.
El Camino Real High fullback Jamal Anderson has spied dozens of linebackers and defensive backs staring at him from just across the line of scrimmage. And to think they call that microscopic area between the offensive and defensive lines the neutral zone. It’s about as neutral as a mine field--and just as easy on the legs.
What makes life particularly hazardous for Anderson is his team’s propensity to run the ball. In last week’s 16-9 upset of Granada Hills in the City Section 4-A Division quarterfinals, the Conquistadores attempted three passes, completing none. In most cases, this would tend to make defensive backs ignore receivers and concentrate on those increasingly leery guys in the backfield.
Yet in many of El Camino Real’s games, a curious thing often takes place about the third quarter. Linebackers and defensive backs start dropping back into more conventional positions--after they get back into an upright position.
They have learned that the inherent danger in an eight-man front, of course, is that a running back might burst through the line. Anderson doesn’t always gain 7.0 yards a carry, his seasonal average; but for every one-yard bam , every two-yard slam , there seems to be a 20-yard jam .
“They kept plugging away until he broke a couple of long ones,” Granada Hills co-Coach Tom Harp said about Anderson, who gained 159 yards against the Highlanders. “And on those long ones, we hit him every time, one on one, at the line of scrimmage, and he went right through them.”
Harp’s dismay is understandable. Previously unbeaten Granada Hills had allowed 100 yards on the ground to just one team in 10 previous games.
Even Anderson, who has rushed for nearly 1,100 yards and who also starts at linebacker, says he wouldn’t have a clue about the best way to corral himself--although he suggests bringing a few friends.
“I don’t know how you tackle me,” said Anderson, a 5-foot-11, 205-pound senior. “People bounce off my legs and people bounce off the top of me. A lot of people grab me and try to rip me down. It’s pretty much gang tackling--no one person can really bring me down.”
Fifteen months ago, any El Camino Real player could have articulated the true definition of “down.” Behind Anderson and a miserly defense, however, the Conquistadores are back, and they will face Dorsey (8-3) in a semifinal game at Jackie Robinson Field at 7:30 tonight.
With raised hopes and raised eyebrows.
It really was only about a season and a half ago, but to co-Coach Mike Maio, years might well have passed. On a sunny afternoon before the Conquistadores’ 1988 opener, his first as the varsity football coach at El Camino Real, Maio fidgeted on the sideline after practice and promised that his team would boldly go where none had gone before.
Or, at least, where no El Camino Real team had been in the previous two seasons.
“Lots of our players don’t remember in the late ‘70s when El Camino was playing against the Bannings in the Coliseum, when nobody wanted a part of us because we were knocking the hell out of people,” Maio said in September of ’88. “I don’t want to be associated with that streak, I don’t want these kids to have to deal with it. It will end.”
Maio was alluding to El Camino Real’s 0-22-2 streak, which started with a loss in the seventh game of 1985.
And as Maio confidently had predicted, winning bred more winning. Soon, thereafter, El Camino Real’s biggest breadwinner showed up.
In the fourth week of ‘88, a reticent Anderson suited up for his first practice. Anderson had been a terror as a youth player in Woodland Hills but had burned out on the sport. The prospect of playing for a team that had not won in 2 1/2 seasons hardly rekindled his competitive fire.
“By my ninth-grade year, I had played six straight years of football,” Anderson said. “And El Camino was pretty tired. Their record was oh-and-this and oh-and-that. . . . So I wasn’t too enthusiastic about coming out.”
Academic eligibility problems kept Anderson off the field as a sophomore, but friends on the varsity finally talked him into trying his luck three games into last season. Oh-for-ever soon turned to “Oh, my.”
Some were concerned that Anderson’s skills would be lost in the rebuilding shuffle.
“I was afraid he’d never be able to show his real abilities,” said Skip Giancanelli, who coached the Conquistadores from 1969-1987 and who still teaches at the school. “He didn’t have a very strong offensive line, but he had the strength to make up for that. He does the things you can’t teach kids.”
Anderson, it seems, schooled a few teammates during his initial practice sessions.
“My 11th-grade year, my first practice, I came out and started lighting up the first-team defense,” Anderson said with a glint in his eye. “So they were like, ‘This guy’s no joke.’ ”
Anybody heard the one about the team that made it to the City semifinals despite passing for just 237 yards in 10 games? The same team that beat Granada Hills without completing a pass? Yeah, the team was ECR. Stands for Elway Can Relax.
Turns out that Anderson is the Conquistadores’ punch line. But he is right, his performance has been no comedy act. Anderson has accounted for 1,125 of El Camino Real’s 1,901 yards on offense (53.9%).
Last week, Anderson broke the single-season school rushing mark of 971 yards set in 1980 by tailback Tony Lewis. Anderson, who this week was selected West Valley League co-Player of the Year by a vote of coaches, has 1,099 rushing yards in ’89.
El Camino Real (6-5) already is assured of its first break-even season since 1981, when it finished 5-5. A victory would give the team its first winning record since 1980 when the Conquistadores were 9-3 and made their last appearance in the City Section championship game, a 34-12 loss to Banning.
The victory over Granada Hills, ranked No. 1 in the Valley all season, was arguably the area’s upset of the year. El Camino Real players have been swept away by its magnitude.
“It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” said senior linebacker Bobby Kim, who last summer started on the Woodland Hills baseball team that won the American Legion World Series. “It’s better than the Series. . . . Being one of four teams in the (City 4-A) playoffs and the only team left in the Valley, we can’t believe it.”
He is not alone, especially considering the team’s de-emphasis of passing. Chuck Knox would love Maio. So how do the Conquistadores compensate for their lack of a passing attack? Hand it to Anderson, their Fort Knox. It’s paradoxical, but it generally has worked.
“(Our success) is a little surprising, because at the beginning of the year we had hopes that we could pass,” Anderson said. “We put in new plays every week because we run so much that we have to do different things. But most of it’s the power, inside game.”
Anderson, playing inside linebacker, has just overrun a sweep in practice, allowing a rather slow-footed member of the scout team to reverse his field and slice across the middle. Dorsey, with a huge offensive line, runs plenty of power pitches.
“No, no, noooooo ,” bellows Maio, who then lectures Anderson and his teammates on the evils of permitting the cutback. “You guys can’t just stand here with your teeth in your mouth.”
Plays such as this tend to make Maio bare his fangs and launch into extended monologues on the value of fundamentals. Players wince: It’s a tune they have heard before.
Anderson’s music of preference is rap. Maio’s favorite rap goes something like this: “You win games with defense. You win games with defense. You win games with defense. . . .”
Lyrical, it isn’t. Clever? Hardly. But it has a certain rhythm, and the guy has a point.
Anderson agrees that defense is what finally put the team over the hump. El Camino Real has surrendered 197.9 yards a game, including 95.3 on the ground.
Strangely, Anderson attributes the defensive unit’s toughness to the fact that the Conquistadores have six two-way players. This, of course, defies conventional logic, which states that too many tiring two-way players is a one-way ticket to fourth-quarter blowouts.
“Most of the people on defense are on offense too,” Anderson said. “When we play good on defense, it carries over. So, pretty much, our defense wins games because our defense is our offense. The momentum carries over.”
So has the enthusiasm.
“These kids really feel that if they play well, winning’s within their grasp,” Giancanelli said. “Not too long ago, there weren’t many people here who were used to feeling that way.”