When Eight Is Just Enough : Sports: Pioneer Baptist High is so small that it has trouble fielding a football team. But the Patriots keep playing to win in the CIF’s eight-man division.

Little Pioneer Baptist High School had only eight players for its opening football game. Fortunately, the Patriots play in the CIF’s eight-man division.

Without rest, those iron men from Norwalk lost, 20-7, to Pilgrim of Los Angeles.

Last week, a day before their second game, Coach Manuel Cortez was hoping not so much for a victory, but that he could fill 14 jerseys.

“A lot of these kids maybe couldn’t play at a big public school on the varsity level, but they get a chance to play here,” Cortez said. “We’re trying to stress more the attitude than the victories. I’m not going to get fired if we go 0 and 9.”

He was in Excelsior High School stadium in Norwalk, a few miles from Pioneer Baptist, watching practice--if it could have been called a practice.

“We get freshmen out here to hold blocking bags so it almost looks like we have defenders,” Cortez said. “It’s not easy to have tackling practice with so few guys. We’ve had it one time.”

Cortez was worse off at the end of last season when, because of injuries and players quitting, he was down to six men and had to add two students who had never played football. The Patriots were 5-4 in 1989, their second winning year in their six-season history.

Eight-man teams, fielded by 45 CIF Southern Section schools with an average enrollment of about 140, have a center, two guards, two ends, a quarterback and two other backs. Games are played on an 80-yard field that is also narrower than a regulation field.

Cortez, 27, an Air Force sergeant who lives in Riverside, has been the unpaid, volunteer coach of the Patriots the last three years.

Cortez is strict. He kicked a player off the team last year for devoting more time to his girlfriend than to the team. “If they break rules, they’re going to pay for it,” Cortez said. “I try not to let them get away with anything. That’s the hardest part about having only a few kids. They think that if they do something they can usually get away with it because we have got to use them.”

He said his team’s attitude has improved over that of previous years when players fought with opponents and many quit because they wanted to play only in games and not practice.

Pioneer Baptist, which has 41 students in grades 10 through 12 and has pupils as young as 4, is a close-knit school with a family environment. Cortez’s wife, Deanna, is the head of the cheerleaders. His father-in-law is Principal Lee Fitzgerald, whose son, Darrin, is Cortez’s assistant and a seventh-grade teacher at the school.

Lee Fitzgerald explained why the Patriots play football at all: “We do it for the kids, to give them an outlet. They see other kids playing, they want to play too. We feel if we can afford uniforms and insurance, we’ll let them play. And it’s part of a well-balanced education.”

The 10-year-old school also has varsity boys basketball and baseball and varsity girls volleyball, basketball and softball.

“We don’t get much recognition here,” said 6-foot-2, 255-pound guard Bob Barnard, whose goal is to become All-CIF. Barnard was at Santa Fe High School as a freshman, but transferred to Pioneer Baptist, he said, because “I was getting away from the Lord over there.”

Barnard is one of two or three players on the team who Cortez said could play at a big school. “The kids here have only a basic understanding of the game,” Cortez said. “We try to make plays very simple, but still they sometimes forget.”

The team’s top offensive threat is senior tailback Elliot Merrick, a Huckleberry Finn look-alike who a few years ago was the water boy. “This is a lot more fun than 11-man, a lot more action, not so crowded,” said Merrick, who hopes his future lies in the ROTC program at Cal State Long Beach.

Sophomore quarterback Kevin Mullins, who has been at Pioneer Baptist since the second grade, is trying to overcome the rookie nerves that affected him last year. “If he can hold up, this might be our first year in the playoffs,” Cortez said. But the coach admitted that Mullins is not a passer, and without a passer, it is hard to win in eight-man.

But the quarterback remains enthusiastic. “It’s awesome,” Mullins said when asked what playing at Pioneer Baptist was like. “The coaches work with you one-on-one. Everybody from school goes to the games--cheerleaders, pep club, all that. Teachers come and support us.”

Cortez said he finds the situation trying, however. Unlike some coaches at large schools, he has more to worry about than his players’ times in the 40-yard dash.

“I have to line the field, make sure we get all the balls in, make sure we get everything done,” Cortez said. “Our equipment is old. We have plenty of helmets but they’re all small. Next year we should be getting more money for our football program.”

The coach, who played at Temple Christian in La Puente, said he keeps plodding because football once kept him in line. “I can do the same thing for these kids,” he said. “You keep encouraging them and keep ‘em out here, they’re going to stay out of trouble.”

Last Friday morning, the Patriots, wearing their black jerseys over shirts and ties, snacked on Pepsi and chips with fellow students outside a cross-adorned classroom building that once was a church. The concrete schoolyard allowed little room for mingling, but since the students numbered barely a handful, it was sufficient.

Within sight of the soda machine, a sign read: “But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

It was not a passive approach that Merrick was taking toward the night’s game. “We’re going to run all over ‘em,” he predicted. “Nobody can stop me.”

When the bell rang, the players tried to put thoughts about the game aside for a few hours. Barnard pulled an English book from one of the lockers that flank the front entrance and went inside.

“Get pumped, dude. Let’s kill those guys,” Mullins said to Merrick as the Patriots arrived in cars and pickup trucks at their home field at Excelsior for the game with Antelope Valley Christian.

There was no trainer, so Cortez taped ankles in the locker room. The players struggled into pads and pulled on black pants with red and white stripes. Kevin Ballinger said his pregame meal consisted of two egg salad sandwiches and a bowl of soup. Barnard put in a red mouthpiece, Merrick swallowed Tylenol.

Fourteen Patriots suited up, but a few were ineligible freshmen who had not yet turned 15. Warming up, the team did not look well prepared. They had “student body left” down well, but Mullins got confused executing “split left, bootleg left.”

“You’re going the wrong way, Kevin,” Cortez said.

The dissatisfied coach led the players back to the locker area, into a room too small to hold any team but this one. He closed the door and said loudly, “I will not put up with guys joking around. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” came the answer in unison.

Cortez went on: “You can’t go out there using language that some of you used at the last game. You are a Christian school. And I don’t want you looking around (in the stands) to see who’s here.”

In the meantime, Antelope Valley Christian, with three times as many players, had arrived by bus.

The game started favorably for the 75 home fans when Ballinger recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff. Then Barnard lumbered on a guard-around play to the Antelope Valley 12-yard line. Rooting for him was his girlfriend, Carrie Hancock, one of two girls in the senior class, who spun in the new black uniform with the sailor collar that the cheerleaders wore.

But Mullins lost a yard on a fumble, which forced the Patriots to try a field goal. A bad snap from center botched the effort.

It took Antelope Valley almost all of the first quarter to score, but after that they were unstoppable. Time and again, a receiver would get behind the Patriot defense and catch a long pass.

Cortez had said the day before the team has never had a good cornerback, and it was still true.

The Patriots also had no passing attack, and repeated thrusts up the middle by Merrick--who was being photographed from the sidelines by his father, Steve--were stopped after little or no gain.

And the fierce tackling that the coaches had hoped for was lacking. Cortez had said last Thursday that the players are told to hit opponents as hard as they can and then, in the Christian manner, help them up.

It was 32-0 at the half and, worse, guard Joey Bonar was wincing on the bench with an ice bag on his knee, and Mullins had been grounded by a blow to the groin. A towel near them read, “Jesus is the only way.”

“This is one night I’m glad I’m not wearing school colors,” said the other senior girl, Stephanie Crowther, who was on the sidelines showing Merrick’s father a letter she had received from Stanford University expressing interest in her as a prospective student.

There was no band to play as the Patriots sprawled dispiritedly on the end zone’s damp grass at halftime, worn down from having to play both offense and defense. The consensus seemed to be that the opponent’s middle linebacker was killing them. “Bobby, you’ve got to lead these guys,” Fitzgerald said to Barnard.

But no moment of redemption occurred. Mullins returned to action but Bonar did not. Still, Pioneer Baptist always managed to put eight men on the field.

Antelope Valley kept passing, which irritated Cortez. “This is one of the worst things about eight-man football,” he said after the score reached 38-0. “Coaches try to run up the score to get up in the polls.”

When another TD and 2-point conversion had made it 46-0 with 2:48 left in the third quarter, the referees, invoking the mercy rule, called the game because the lead was so large. Antelope Valley celebrated as if it had just won the CIF title.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not the end of the world,” Cortez told his players after they shook hands with the Eagles. “Don’t feel ashamed of anything. They kept their starters in the whole time.”

Barnard took the blame. “I don’t think any of us, counting me, gave 100%,” he said.

Fitzgerald did not want the team to sag under the burden of an 0-2 record. “If you’re proud you’re out there playing, then you’re not losers,” he said.

Suddenly, the Patriots looked as if they could not wait for the next game. Cheerleaders and parents walked out to meet them, to slap shoulders and offer words of comfort.

“You OK?” Barnard’s girlfriend asked him.

They were all OK because, though this had been only an eight-man game, it was still high school football, with fans in the stands, under the lights on a Friday night. They would never forget it, much to the satisfaction of Cortez, a lone figure collecting yard markers from the field long after everyone else had left.