Nogales Football Set to Resume After Gang Fears Canceled Game

As the Nogales High School football team practiced long bombs and quarterback sneaks in preparation for a big varsity game tonight at home in La Puente, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were busy devising their own game plan.

By the time Nogales’ Sierra League opener begins against Baldwin Park, squad cars will be stationed out front, detectives will be surveying the high school crowd and campus police will be circulating in the bleachers.

“We want to keep a very close eye upon that football game,” said Capt. Mike Nagaoka, who heads the sheriff’s substation in nearby Industry.

This season, the traditional excitement of high school football at Nogales has been charged darkly with a different sort of electricity: the prospect of gang violence.

Last Friday, the Nogales game against a Pomona school was canceled amid fears of gang combat--apparently the first time in Southern California that a high school athletic contest has been called off because of such a threat.

Deputies said there have been at least 16 gang-related shootings in and around La Puente over the last two weeks, including the drive-by slaying of a former Nogales student and a flurry of bullets fired at the Nogales marching band one evening during practice.

“If you cancel (the game), you have the problem of giving into the criminal element in the community,” said Sharon Robison, superintendent of the 19,000-student Rowland Unified School District. “But if you let the game go on and something happens, you never forgive yourself. It was a no-win situation.”

The team, which is 2-0 and among the top-ranked teams in the San Gabriel Valley, took last week’s cancellation hard.

Coach Brian Beveridge broke the news to the players several hours before the kickoff. One youth, named player of the game the previous week, hurled his congratulatory cake in disgust. Another player suggested that the game go on but that fans be kept out.

“As a coach I really missed having a ballgame,” Beveridge said. “But as a person and a father I thought it was the right thing to do.”

Although high school games in the region have been disrupted by fights and gunfire before, prep athletic officials in Southern California knew of no other instance in which the threat of violence had forced a cancellation ahead of time.

“We’ve had all kinds of craziness go on,” said Stan Thomas, commissioner of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section, which oversees high school sports in most of the Southland. “But as far as I know, we’ve never had a game canceled under those conditions. It’s a very regretable incident.”

“It’s terrible, absolutely terrible,” said Nogales principal Ron Tyler, who added that his campus is relatively gang free. “We took a very strong stance that we weren’t going to put any of our students or ballplayers or performing groups or fans in a position where they’re safety could possibly be jeopardized.”

On Thursday, however, students simply were anxious to get on with the season.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” said Clint Wild, the Nobles’ 16-year-old center. “We just want to play.”