A Flash Back in Time : Fillmore’s Tory Cabral Embodies Small-Town Flavor of 80-Year-Old Santa Paula Rivalry

Drive beyond the endless tract homes west of the San Fernando Valley and head up into the sparse canyons of northeastern Ventura County.

Follow the winding road up, up on a bright, brilliant autumn afternoon and descend, slowly, into the remote little town of Fillmore, pop. 12,000.

Drive down Central Avenue. Drive past pharmacies and grocery stores, an old movie theater and City Hall. Breathe crisper air and look at bluer skies as you make your way up the street to Fillmore High, where the hometown Flashes will play host to archrival Santa Paula on Friday night in the teams’ 80th meeting, the latest in the oldest rivalry in Ventura County.

It is a game that will decide the Frontier League championship. It is a game of such importance to the locals that extra seating has been brought in to accommodate the expected overflow crowd.

It is a game that Tory Cabral hopes to make his own.

Fillmore has been Cabral’s town all his life. And Friday night will represent the regular-season end of his high school football career--a career that has seen the senior tailback play on two of the best teams in school history and set school records by the bushel.

Tory Cabral, 6-foot, 176 pounds, might not be headed to a Division I college after this season. It is likely that he will play at a junior college next fall, either Moorpark or Ventura.

But for one final Friday night, Cabral will be the big man on a little campus--and the big man in a little town.

He will walk down streets in Fillmore this week, and store owners will ask about his ankle, sprained two weeks ago in a win over Bishop Diego and still tender in this, the week of the big game. Elementary school kids will play touch football in the cool November afternoon, imagining the day they can be like Tory Cabral and play in a game for all the marbles.

Coach Curtis Garner of Fillmore (8-1, 2-1 in league play) and Coach Mike Tsoutsouvas of Santa Paula (7-2, 3-0) will have little trouble firing up the charges for this game. The players know each other well, growing up just nine miles apart in, as Tsoutsouvas says, “the towns that time forgot.”

Both know that Cabral, who has gained 984 yards and scored 12 touchdowns in six full games this season, has the ability to play a hero’s role in a game such as this.

“Even if Tory doesn’t play, it will still be a hard-hitting game,” Garner said. “But to lose him would take the wind out of our sails. You can’t lose a kid of Tory’s magnitude and not have an effect.”

War stories back him up. Especially the one from the 35-28 win over Bishop Diego on Oct. 20.

Fillmore trailed at one point, 28-7. By the time it was over, Cabral had scored all five of his team’s touchdowns and kicked three point-after conversions to account for 33 of Fillmore’s 35 points. After scoring the game’s final touchdown, Cabral intercepted a Bishop Diego pass to kill the final drive and keep Fillmore’s then-unbeaten record intact.

“He just took matters into his own hands, so to speak,” Garner said.

One gets the point--Cabral scores a lot of them. In fact, as the team’s kicker and star runner, he twice has scored all of the team’s points in games this season and has racked up 104 points to rank second among area scorers.

But try getting Cabral to talk about that and you might as well try to tackle him in the open field. He is small-town shy and deflects all praise to the team.

“After that game, everybody was like, ‘You won the game,’ ” Cabral said. “It’s nice and all, but it’s not me. It’s everybody else. It’s our line, it’s our defense. It’s everybody.”

Although it may take everybody to win, Garner knows that performances such as Cabral’s are not easy to come by. It is no wonder that Cabral will leave Fillmore as one of the 770-student school’s most prolific performers. Upon review, it is little wonder that Cabral, as a junior, was selected to The Times’ All-Ventura County team and selected first-team All-Southern Section.

In the Bishop Diego game Cabral set a school record for most points in a game. A 275-yard performance last year stands as the school single-game rushing record. A 92-yard punt return also is a school mark. His total of 1,254 yards as a junior is the most in school history, accomplished for a team whose 10-2 record is the school’s best.

The records don’t stop there. Cabral holds the school mark for points (104) and touchdowns (14) in a season. Seven school records for one player is not bad for a school that opened in 1910.

Other coaches know and respect such numbers. Tsoutsouvas expects to see No. 22 on Friday night hitting holes and gaining yards.

“He’ll be ready to play,” Tsoutsouvas said. “He’s got good quickness, good lateral movement. Just having him there will be a real uplift to their team.”

Any doubts whether Cabral will play? Bet on it. Cabral has a history of defying the medical community--most recently in the Bishop Diego exhibition. After Cabral scored the fifth touchdown that night, he severely turned his ankle in the end zone. The pain, as he recalls it, was agonizing. But any talk of him leaving the game? Hogwash.

“My teammates came over and said, ‘Get up, I’ll carry you,’ ” Cabral said. “I said, ‘No, no. I feel good. Watch. I’ll get up.’ ”

Cabral stood, tied his shoelaces and sprinted off the field. “I just forgot about the pain,” he said.

But when he got home that night, the pain didn’t forget him. He couldn’t sleep all night and stayed on crutches the following week, sitting out the Nordhoff game. He carried the ball just three times last week against Calabasas, and the Flashes were handed a stunning 13-7 upset loss, spoiling their unbeaten record.

This week, however, there will be no sitting out. These two communities have been banging helmets since 1910. There’s history here--Tory’s father Joe played at Santa Paula and his mother Georgia attended Fillmore. Joe now works as a foreman in Fillmore. Georgia works as a sewing machine operator a block away.

This is the kind of community in which high school football exploits are meant to be recounted on lazy afternoons in the local barber shop.

Regardless of the outcome Friday, they will remember Tory Cabral when he leaves Fillmore High. Perhaps even a dedication--how does Tory Cabral Field sound?

Cabral smiles shyly. He knows that there’s no such possibility. But isn’t it nice to think so?

“Wow,” he says. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?”