The Revelry Surrounding These Rivalries Has No Peer

Every morning when he walks out the door, Dan Schaitel shudders. He can’t get used to seeing his wife wear red.

The fuss over clothing is simple. Schaitel is the cross-country coach at Poway High School. For nine years, the family has worn the forest green and gray of the Titans. Red has been off limits since Day 1 because it is one of the colors of Mt. Carmel High School, Poway’s Palomar League nemesis in more sports than one.

But now, it’s almost a prerequisite that Janet Schaitel wear red to work. This year she became the athletic secretary at Mt. Carmel.

Rival Mt. Carmel.

--At the 1989 cross-country meet between the schools, about 300 people lined the Lake Poway course to watch the Sundevils and Titans. Three hundred at a cross-country meet is like having 10,000 at a football game.

--A few weeks ago during a workout, Schaitel’s team was running through the streets of an affluent Poway neighborhood. One of his runners was bitten by a dog belonging to a Scott Fisher.

Fisher is the principal at Mt. Carmel.

Clearly, this is one heck of a rivalry.

Not all coaches at the two schools are as intense as Schaitel and Mt. Carmel’s Dennis McClanahan--who recommended Schaitel for the Poway job--but most coaches won’t face each other as many as 12 times during the year with state and sometimes national rankings at stake in cross-country and track and field.

“When the two schools get together,” Schaitel says, “things happen.”

And that’s what rivalries are all about.

--Territorial bragging rights. The schools usually represent neighboring communities; the athletes often know each other and, in many cases, have competed against each other previously.

--Championships. Nothing gets the adrenaline flowing like a game with a league title or playoff spot at stake. Bragging rights are OK, but does a rivalry mean as much if you’re playing for fourth place?

--Excellence. The schools have competent, competitive programs regardless of the sport, and beating a rival is often a barometer of your program. And a true rivalry transcends football.

--Attendance/community support. The rivalry acid test: Does a bigger crowd than usual show up to watch the girls’ volleyball match?

“Undoubtedly, Poway-Mt. Carmel is the best rivalry in the county,” Schaitel said. “They’re both very competitive schools and they’re both at the top of what they do. Athletics is still a major item in the overall environment at the two high schools; I don’t think that’s true everywhere.”

Schaitel was graduated from Hoover in 1965 knowing the Cardinals’ rivalry with Crawford, and he taught at St. Augustine, where he witnessed annual showdowns between Saints and University. And he’s seen Poway and Mt. Carmel combine to win 11 section titles in 20 sports in 1989-90, including eight by Poway.

You can’t find 10,000 fans at a Poway-Mt. Carmel football game--or virtually any game between schools from neighboring communities these days. But if you absolutely had to fill a stadium, Morse-Lincoln would do the trick. That might be as close as you could get to 1947, when 27,000 packed Balboa Stadium to watch the downtown team, San Diego, face off against its uptown rival, Hoover.

One of those in attendance was 7-year-old John Shacklett, who was watching his first high school football game. He eventually was graduated from Grossmont in 1957 and became the sixth-winningest football coach in San Diego County history (142-64-6 since 1971) at Morse High.

He knows what big crowds are like.

“We’ve thought about having a St. Augustine-University and Morse-Lincoln doubleheader in (San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium),” Shacklett said. “We just don’t have a big enough stadium (of our own) right now.”

About 2,000 were turned away at Mesa College for last year’s Morse-Lincoln game, which has attracted as many as 10,000 in years past. But as big as Morse-Lincoln is, Shacklett sees another game becoming the county’s biggest.

“The last three or four years,” Shacklett said, “Point Loma-Morse has been kind of a happening.”

Happenings are what it’s all about when it comes to big games and rivalries. You can’t afford Charger tickets? Try Helix-Grossmont or Sweetwater-Chula Vista. How about Valhalla-Monte Vista in wrestling?

Basketball’s your bag? Again, Lincoln-Morse. Poway-Mt. Carmel. Definitely Oceanside-El Camino: It’s cramped, it’s humid and it’s a wonder tickets aren’t being scalped outside. This rivalry’s so intense, even the gym walls sweat bricks.

In a 1986 game, an Oceanside player named Junior Seau--now a Charger linebacker--became a part of local lore.

Playing at El Camino for the Avocado League championship, the game was heated, tempers flared, and some fans tried to storm onto the floor--but were headed off by security. El Camino game films showed Seau had elbowed one of the Wildcats in the back of the head on a play near the basket.

A week later--after principals and athletic directors at the two schools had reviewed the incident--Seau apologized to the El Camino players, who later beat Oceanside in the section finals.

The next year, Seau was named the league’s player of the year over El Camino’s Edmund Johnson, and the two teams met in the finals again.

“Edmund questioned some things in the newspaper about Junior and our team, so I clipped them out and saved them,” Oceanside Coach Don Montamble said. “When we went to the Sports Arena to play them in the finals, I took the clips and posted them on the board while the team was waiting outside. I came back out, told the team to go inside, and then I locked the door behind them.

“I left them in there long enough read the article and really stew it over. When I finally went in, it was a very focused locker room.”

Oceanside beat El Camino, 53-51, even though Seau sat out much of the game after getting in early foul trouble.

“There’s no doubt about it, Oceanside-El Camino is the basketball rivalry,” El Camino Coach Ray Johnson said. “The last 10 years it’s been us or them for the league title, and then you throw in the six section titles in the last (nine) years.”

Montamble remembers the rivalry from his high school days. He was at Oceanside for three years, then had the choice of going to El Camino his senior season, 1977. He took it.

In that first season, Oceanside beat El Camino in the first round of league play, but Oceanside kept the Wildcats from the playoffs by sinking a basket with five seconds left in their second-round game.

They’ve been at each other’s throats ever since.

Many rivalries today are borne out of schools splitting. Helix broke off from Grossmont, Mt. Carmel from Poway, Chula Vista from Sweetwater. But with more schools being built, some other rivalries have diminished.

Fallbrook’s rival is still Vista, but Vista considers fourth-year Rancho Buena Vista its primary foe. Santana and El Capitan have been rivals for years, but with Santee getting a second school--West Hills--Santana probably will develop a healthy distaste for the Wolf Pack.

Quite simply, where Sweetwater and Chula Vista used to be the only teams in Chula Vista and National City, now there are five, including Bonita Vista, Castle Park and Hilltop. Subsequently, Sweetwater-Chula Vista has lost some intensity over the past four decades.

“The more schools you get in North County (or anywhere else), the less rivalry you have,” said Bob Burton, the activities director at Fallbrook for the past 25 years. “There’s less tradition.”

A $35 million bond issue on the November ballot could provide for a second high school in Fallbrook by 1994 or 1995. Despite all the tradition that Burton will recall with fondness, the Vista-Fallbrook rivalry probably will become just a memory.

Most “bitter rivalries” in the East County already are memories. Since the Grossmont Conference split into 2-A and 3-A leagues, many games lost their meaning.

“Since that split, the intense rivalry just isn’t there,” Mimi Test, assistant principal at 2-A Valhalla, said of her school’s rivalry with 3-A Granite Hills. “The intensity of rivalries in the Grossmont District has been diluted somewhat because when they go head-to-head, it isn’t anything that counts heavy toward a league championship.”

The oldest East County rivalry, Grossmont-Helix, whose 40-year rivalry includes the football teams playing for the annual possession of a musket, is a 2-A vs. 3-A rivalry. So is El Capitan-Santana and El Cajon Valley-Granite Hills. The East County rivalries tend to differ by sport based on strength of program. That’s why Valhalla gets up for Monte Vista in wrestling, Granite Hills in football and Helix in water polo.

Granite Hills’ traditional rival is El Cajon Valley, but Valhalla generates more excitement. Elsewhere, Point Loma-La Jolla stopped playing for The Shoe; the Pointer football team became more interested in Morse while the other sports began looking toward Mira Mesa. That’s also why the annual Southwest-Mar Vista “Battle for the Bell,” a 50-pound perpetual bronze bell, has lost some glamour; Southwest has beaten Mar Vista seven of the past eight years, six by shutout. Now Southwest gets excited when it hears the words “Chula Vista.”

Yet rivalries are treated much differently by students today.

Mount Miguel football Coach Gary Cooper was a member of the Class of 1968.

“I’ve noticed a change in intensity,” Cooper said. “When I was back in high school, we used to try to upstage one another. I can remember one year Helix sent over a big board of mounted hot dogs that represented our players--had them delivered during our pep assembly. We retaliated with a helicopter dropping Kleenexes on their campus because they were the Scotties. We got in trouble for it.

“There used to be more campus visits--in a good-natured way--and you don’t see that as much now.”

San Diego rivalries reached their peak before the population exploded. There were fewer schools, larger talent pools and community-wide support. And winning was important.

According to Rick Smith, who has done extensive research on the San Diego high school scene and was a sports writer for The Tribune from 1960-72, history would indicate that Hoover’s best football team was in 1954. That year, Hoover Principal Floyd Johnson told football coach Bob Kirchhoff that if the Cardinals didn’t beat rival San Diego, changes were forthcoming.

Hoover entered the big game with a 7-0 record; San Diego was 6-1. John Adams, a 230-pound fullback who ran the 100-yard dash in 9.9 seconds and would finish the year with 26 touchdowns, broke off a 65-yard run and was tackled at the one-yard line by Willie West. The Cavers held on downs and eventually scored a 7-0 victory. The next day The Tribune showed a photo of San Diego defensive back Art Powell clearly interfering with Hoover receiver John Vanderline on one of the passes into the end zone during the failed series.

And Kirchhoff? He was canned.

Rivalries for some schools aren’t rivalries for others. It seems everyone dislikes San Pasqual. Ramona and San Marcos consider San Pasqual their rival, but San Pasqual’s rival is Escondido. But 2-A San Pasqual plays 3-A Orange Glen every year for the Bear Trophy, a carved wooden bear that goes to the winner of the football game between the schools on Bear Valley Parkway.

There are other tangible spoils for some rivalries. In addition to a musket, a bear and a bronze bell, other traditional football rivalries provide the Golden Whip (El Capitan-Santana), the Golden Feather (El Cajon-Granite Hills) and a Claymore sword (Mount Miguel-Helix). Bullhorns go to the winner of the Mount Miguel-Monte Vista wrestling match.

There are also traditional awards for some football winners, such as the Lonnie Fields, Jr./Ty Morrison Southeastern Bowl Trophy (Morse-Lincoln), the Kiwanis Cup (Poway-Mt. Carmel) and the Chamber of Commerce Intercity Trophy (Vista-Rancho Buena Vista).

And the two Catholic schools, University and St. Augustine, play the Charity Bowl.

Ah, charity. If only Scott Fisher’s dog had shown some. Then again, it was Poway.

REMARKABLE RIVALRIES

ON THE GRIDIRON:

You want a happening? Here’s a top 10 for football. 1. Morse-Point Loma. 2. Morse-Lincoln. 3. Grossmont-Helix. 4. Sweetwater-Chula Vista. 5. Oceanside-El Camino. 6. Vista-Rancho Buena Vista. 7. St. Augustine-USDHS. 8. San Marcos-San Pasqual. 9. Poway-Mt. Carmel. 10. Vista-Fallbrook.

OTHER SPECTATOR SPECTACLES:

Ten non-football contests you can’t go wrong with as a spectator. 1. Oceanside-El Camino boys’ basketball. 2. Lincoln-Morse boys’ basketball. 3. Valhalla-Monte Vista wrestling. 4. Poway-Mt. Carmel boys’ basketball. 5. Poway-Torrey Pines girls’ volleyball. 6. San Dieguito-Poway boys’ volleyball. 7. Mission Bay-USDHS baseball. 8. La Jolla-University City boys’ soccer. 9. Madison-Patrick Henry softball. 10. Torrey Pines-Bonita Vista girls’ soccer.