NOTEBOOK : Glendale to Test 5-0 Mark Against League Foes

The Glendale High football team just keeps on rolling.

Behind tailback Pathon Rucker and a swarming defense, the Dynamiters are off to a 5-0 start heading into their Pacific League opener Friday against Arcadia, the defending league champion.

Rucker, the only sophomore on the Times’ All-Glendale team last year, has rushed for 800 yards and scored 14 touchdowns. In last week’s 29-0 victory over Burbank, Rucker gained 128 yards in 20 carries despite running against a nine-man front.

Glendale’s defense has also been impressive. The Dynamiters surrendered two touchdowns against Alhambra in the season opener, but have allowed only one since in bolting to their best start since 1982.

Hoover (2-3), which lost to La Canada, 41-7, last week, opens Pacific League play Friday against Pasadena.

Crescenta Valley (3-2), a 7-6 winner over Burroughs last week, opens Pacific League play against Muir on Saturday.

Dazed and confused: Crescenta Valley’s Jason Steinlight staggered from the locker room before the Falcons’ game against Burroughs on Thursday.

“He looked as a pale as a ghost,” Crescenta Valley Coach Jim Beckenhauer said.

However, the senior emerged as the unlikely hero in a 7-6 victory.

“I had been sick and I got too pumped up before the game,” Steinlight said. “We were waiting and all of a sudden I got dizzy.”

Steinlight, a starting tight end and defensive end and a back-up kicker, didn’t play in the first half, but was called upon late in the third quarter to kick the go-ahead extra point after regular kicker Jason Rountree was sidelined by a nagging thigh injury.

“I was tempted to tell the coach to go for two points instead,” said Steinlight, who had never kicked in a varsity game. “I felt all this pressure and I didn’t want to look up after I kicked it. I just listened for the crowd.

“It was an interesting night.”

Little big man: Bobby Webster, a 5-foot-5 running back for Glendale College continues, to have a big impact on the offense.

Webster, a freshman, gained 186 yards in 33 carries and scored four touchdowns in Glendale’s 37-27 Western State Conference victory over Valley on Saturday, improving the Vaqueros to 2-2 overall and 2-1 in WSC play.

Webster, who gained 143 yards and scored two touchdowns in Glendale’s 21-12 win over L. A. Southwest two weeks ago, scored on runs of four, two, one and six yards against Valley.

Glendale will continue its WSC schedule Saturday at Pierce.

Exciting newcomer: Occidental College, which unveiled an explosive freshman last year in running back Gary Little, and again this season in running back Brian Madlangbayan, is seeing another exciting newcomer develop.

Quarterback Derrick Williams, a freshman from Crenshaw High, scored on a 45-yard run and connected with Charles Jordan for a 95-yard touchdown pass in a 22-10 nonconference victory over Trinity (Tex.) University last weekend.

Occidental (3-2, 2-2), the three-time defending Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference champion, meets a surprisingly competitive Pomona-Pitzer (2-2, 2-0) on Saturday.

Staff writer Kirby Lee contributed to this notebook.