Pallares Had Help From His Friends : Football: Self-effacing former Valencia standout gives blockers credit for his county rushing record.

The toddler yanks one book after another from the small bookshelf in the living room and flops them onto a nearby coffee table.

When it becomes clear she intends to prolong the game until nothing remains, Ray Pallares persuades his daughter to find another source of amusement.

“Rayleen, don’t take any more out,” Pallares tells her softly. The girl smiles and runs out of the room.

Chasing children, Pallares has found, can be tougher than chasing football records.

Pallares, 23, is a newcomer to parenthood. He and wife Irene, whom Pallares met while at Valencia High School in Placentia and married two years ago, are raising 1 1/2-year-old Rayleen and 1-month-old Alicia.

But five years ago this week, Pallares was raising eyebrows by rushing for 238 yards against Savanna to establish an Orange County high school career mark of 4,329 yards. The previous record of 4,164 belonged to Santa Ana Valley’s Myron White.

Pallares increased the total to 5,397 by the end of the season to break the state record at the time. Coincidentally, another White--Russell, of Crespi High in Encino and now playing for Cal--surpassed Pallares in 1988, finishing with 5,998 yards.

Back then, Pallares, a 5-foot-11, 188-pound running back, preferred a low-key approach to his accomplishment. The record was great, he would say, but the team’s success seemed to concern him more. Not much has changed along those lines the past few years.

“I don’t look at it as a really big deal, but I’m proud of it,” Pallares said. “I didn’t really think about it much. All we were thinking about was winning football games. Every time we played, I just accumulated yards.”

Big chunks of them. But Pallares said his heroics were greatly exaggerated. He still refuses to accept much--if any--of the credit.

“We had an outstanding line in my senior year,” Pallares said. “We had one guy who is now going to Hawaii (Mark Williams) and Joe Garten, who is now an All-American at Colorado.

“If someone sat down and looked at the films of the games, they’d see that the offensive line already had driven the defensive line back three yards before I even got the ball. I think the papers really hyped it up a lot. If you go by them, I would be in the pros right now. But I was nothing more than a better-than-average player.”

If Pallares indeed had a glitch in his game, it might have been his speed--or lack of it, as detractors were quick to point out. Pallares said he was no Carl Lewis, but he wasn’t a slow poke, either.

“I ran a 4.5 40 at Fullerton (College) the last time I was clocked,” he said. “I really wasn’t that slow. I really didn’t have the speed to burn or anything like that, but I wasn’t that slow.”

But the issue apparently loomed larger once Pallares was out of high school. He was recruited by only two Division I schools--Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton--and chose the 49ers. After redshirting his first year, Pallares transferred to Fullerton College.

“I noticed that the guys were a lot bigger and stronger, and the game was a lot faster,” Pallares said about his short stay at Long Beach. “Speed is so much more important there. The game from high school to college is like making a transition from freshman to varsity in high school.”

At Fullerton, Pallares became primarily a blocking back for Jeff Andrews, a second-team community college All-American who Pallares says is the best running back he has seen. When his eligibility ended after the 1988 season, Pallares collected his general education degree the next spring and left organized football.

For the past year, Pallares has been working as an apprentice mason for the same Santa Ana company that employed his father for many years. And he has been trying to cope with being a father himself.

“Now it’s not what I want to do, it’s what we have to do,” Pallares said. “But I like it. I have 17 nieces and nephews, so I grew up having a lot of kids around.”

Pallares said his only connections to the sport now are occasional pickup games with friends or relatives and through following the colleges, especially Colorado and Garten. He said he also reads the papers to see how Valencia is doing, but doesn’t attend games.

And he still reminisces about a time when the legend of Ray Pallares grew with each passing week. One game he remembers particularly fondly was Valencia’s 17-14 victory over El Toro during his sophomore season of 1983.

“It was like David and Goliath,” Pallares said of the game won on Jim Campanis’ field goal with five seconds remaining. “We had just come off a loss to Sonora. They (El Toro) had a lot more talent than we did. But that night we played so much as a team. I remember practicing that week and not seeing anyone goofing off.

“It was a lot of fun. I won’t trade those moments for anything. I remember them so vividly.”