Orange Glen Will Have a Difficult Job Making Name for Itself

Orange Glen High School’s football team must feel a little like a truck driver from a repertory theater in Upper Sandusky who’s going on stage with an Olivier or a Burton.

If Saturday’s CIF 3-A football championship game was a party, the poor Patriots would be the hors d’oeuvres . . . or ashtrays.

Everyone knows someone other than Morse High School will be on the field at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, but no one knows exactly who that might be. What’s more, it’s as if it really doesn’t make much difference.

Orange Glen has to hope it can make one or two fans nudge their neighbors and ask, “Say, who are those other guys?”

You see, Orange Glen came out of what might be called The Other Bracket in the 3-A semifinals. This was roughly equivalent of coming out of the AFC championship game into the Super Bowl.

It was kind of a lose-lose deal, meaning the loser got to go home and the winner had to be high school’s version of the Denver Broncos against the 49ers. This was like winning the lottery and being told you had to go into that cage and take the money away from the tiger.

Figuratively, Orange Glen is up against Tigers, assuming Morse’s nickname should be taken in a mere figurative sense. Maybe this case deserves a more literal definition.

There is talk, you see, that this Morse team is the greatest ever to roam the county’s landscape. You get that kind of rhetoric when a team has won 13 straight games and scored points at the rate of better than one a minute.

Among teams in The Times’ final San Diego County Top 10, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 have fallen to Morse by an average score of 39-15. It also played four other playoff teams and scored 56, 57, 44 and 57 points.

In other words, it played the best 1990 had to offer . . . and pummeled them all mercilessly. Ominously, Orange Glen came to the playoffs unranked.

Having heard about this awesome Morse team, I went to watch a late-season game at Point Loma. This figured to be a good test because Point Loma was ranked No. 2 at the time. It lost, 40-13, and remained No. 2. After all, there is no shame in being routed by Morse.

My initial reaction after that game was that Morse could not be that good because it did not seem to have an appreciable passing attack. Upon further reflection, I concluded that giving Morse a passing attack would be like putting wings on a bull elephant.

Why bother?

If Morse could pass, it wouldn’t be in the CIF 3-A championship game. It would be in the Fiesta Bowl.

Besides, who says Morse cannot pass?

It has this quarterback with a cuddly name who seems to be able to do whatever might be his pleasure. Teddy Lawrence threw all of 48 passes, seven for touchdowns, in 10 regular-season games. When a team is winning games by such wide margins, there is etiquette in not passing.

What Lawrence does best, other than gentlemanly not passing, is run. He averaged 19 yards a carry.

Lawrence is also Morse’s punter. Somebody, of course, had to be designated Morse’s punter, and it may as well have been the homecoming queen for all the Tigers had to punt. On those few occasions when Lawrence dropped back to punt, opponents prayed for good snaps so he would not do something improvisational . . . like run.

Lawrence has no intention of playing quarterback in college, because he stands 5-9 and weighs 175 pounds and aspires to play in the National Football League. He knows there will be little call for quarterbacks of that physical stature in the NFL. Thus, he hopes to continue his career as a college running back or wide receiver or defensive back. Playing quarterback in college, to him, would be like majoring in graphic arts to prepare for a career in stocks and bonds.

In truth, Lawrence isn’t even Morse’s most prolific running back. That would be Gary Taylor, a surprisingly punishing wisp of a mere 165 pounds. Lawrence is the dancer, and Taylor is the grinder.

The two of them do their work behind people such as Salua Poutoa, who looks like a mesa with legs. He stands 6-0 and weighs 300 pounds. You could build condos on this guy. A sharp-eyed developer would sell his shoulders as view lots.

Poutoa has a sidekick in the line named John Moe, and there’s a whole lot of Moe, too. He weighs 270 pounds, spread slightly more thinly over a 6-2 frame. He plans to go to the Naval Academy, where he will study to be an aircraft carrier.

There is more to these guys than just these guys, to be sure.

The fellow who has put this all together is John Shacklett, a veteran coach who has this nervous sideline habit of neatly folding little pieces of tape and either chewing them or eating them. I couldn’t be sure.

Regardless, Shacklett is making a habit of getting whatever he has in a given year into the championship game. He could almost make his reservations a year in advance.

Understandably, John Shacklett is a little evasive about just where this team might rank among the county’s all-time great teams. He knows it is a little stupid to try to make such assessments.

All he hopes is that Morse is San Diego County’s best team this year.

The Other Team will try to have a say in the matter. What was the name again?