3-A CHAMPIONSHIP / MORSE-ORANGE GLEN : Orange Glen Lurks in Morse’s Shadow

Maybe Morse is the greatest high school football team this side of the Indian Ocean.

Rob Gilster doesn’t mind.

He coaches the other team: Orange Glen. He is happy to have his Patriots (9-4) slip quietly into San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium at 4:45 p.m. today when they attempt to topple Morse (13-0) in the Section 3-A championship.

Morse Coach John Shacklett is trying to keep his players away from the newspapers to prevent them from reading about how magnificent they are. Gilster is letting his guys grab every sports section in town.

“We let them read it,” he said. “We love it when they write about the other team.”

The reason is simple. The more talk there is of Morse, the more Orange Glen has to gain by beating them. Just like last week, when the Patriots upset Rancho Buena Vista, and the week before, when they upset Helix. Their opponents keep coming in as the favorites. They keep going home upset.

“The kids are excited,” Gilster said. “I think it’s exciting for them because they’ve heard all year that Orange Glen was supposed to finish last.”

Even now, they aren’t getting heaps of respect. Just the other day Morse quarterback Teddy Lawrence was chuckling while talking about Omar Navarro, Orange Glen’s quarterback. Navarro isn’t much taller than your average fire hydrant. He stands at 5-foot-7 if his hair is combed skyward.

“He’s a little too short and too slow to be running around trying to pass,” Lawrence said. “So I think, definitely, we’re going to have a good game.”

Standing 5-9, Lawrence isn’t exactly a World Trade Center building. But he’s fun to watch, unless, of course, you’re trying to tackle him. Lawrence is the main ingredient in an option attack that also features running back Gary Taylor, who led the county in rushing during the regular season with 1,977 yards. Taylor averaged 11.6 a carry.

Orange Glen counters with Navarro, who hooks up often with possession receiver Kris Plash, a sure-handed junior who Gilster says has dropped only one pass in two years. Navarro and Mt. Carmel’s Matt Miller were the only two quarterbacks in the county to pass for more than 2,000 yards during the regular season. Plash accounted for 758 of those yards in 51 receptions.

And Navarro’s height doesn’t concern Gilster. Sometimes, being the shortest kid on the field is an advantage.

“What he’s done a couple of times is he’s ducked under (the rushers),” Gilster said. “When they go to tackle him around his chest he disappears.”

His magic act Saturday will be to try to make Morse’s perfect season disappear. USA Today ranked the Tigers sixth in the country this week.

Shacklett is trying to downplay the publicity.

“We’re a good high school football team,” he said. “We’re not ready to play San Diego State or the Chargers. Last week we found out how high school we can be.”

That was against Chula Vista, a spirited team that came within a few Lawrence stutter steps of ending Morse’s season. Chula Vista pounded Morse effectively in the first half, taking a 28-13 lead. Then Morse woke up.

Now the Tigers are on the verge of an undefeated season, the first in Shacklett’s 20 years at Morse. It has required the coach to be a bit of a psychologist.

“One of the problems I’ve been faced with this year is trying to make sure the kids don’t believe what they read,” Shacklett said. “That’s awful hard to do sometimes with some of the guys I have.”

This week has been busier than ever for Shacklett. The recruiters are filtering in and out. They want to talk with Lawrence and several other Morse players. But Shacklett won’t let them until next week, until his players have finished their high school football business.

Shacklett also has had to reconstruct his game plan. He didn’t expect Orange Glen to beat Rancho Buena Vista any more than anyone else did.

“I have to admit, I was a little surprised,” he said. “We’re kind of reorganizing our thinking now. We haven’t run into a single-back offense that spends a lot of time throwing the ball. So we’re having to spend a lot of time with that.”

Certainly, doing extra preparation is far preferable to not playing at all. Lawrence thought about that possibility during halftime last week. It didn’t sit well.

Said Lawrence: “I didn’t want to hear from everybody: ‘You guys thought you were too good.’ ”