Rebuilt Cavers Want to Add a Chapter to School’s Lore : High school football: San Diego High’s 4-0 start rekindles enthusiam at the school that dominated county football for decades. Coach Art Anderson, an ex-pro lineman, is the driving force.

What a homecoming they might have at San Diego High this year.

San Diego’s football team is 4-0. The last time the Cavemen had this kind of a start, Elvis Presley had four top-10 hits. The alumni have been waiting 32 years for a season like this.

It was 1959, and the homecoming crowds at Balboa Stadium were anywhere from 15,000 to 28,000. Back then, the alumni didn’t miss a game. San Diego football games were a big attraction for the entire city.

“I haven’t seen a game in 15 years but I still check the paper every Saturday,” said Jerry Dahms, 61, who played at San Diego from 1944 to 1947 and later coached there. “It’s been a long, long time. They’ve been pretty bad. I don’t know why.”

At San Diego, history would be impossible to repeat. Perhaps no high school team in the country has matched the 22-year territorial reign the Cavers held from 1911 to 1935. During that span, San Diego never lost a football game to another county team.

In the past 20 years, however, San Diego has had only three winning seasons.

The alumni haven’t had the nerve to watch.

Crowd counts this season have hovered around 2,000, but if the Cavers--as they are known now--keep winning, expect a much larger turnout on Oct. 18 for the homecoming game against Hoover.

“I played in the heyday and I coached in the heyday,” Dalms said. “I’ve got a scrapbook. We had over 25,000 for the Hoover game when I was a junior. The stadium only held about 27,000. . . .”

Back in 1910, ‘20, ‘30, ‘40, ’50 or ‘60, you’d get thrown in the bay for knocking San Diego football.

“They had to kick us out of the league down here,” Dahms said. “We were too big; we were too good.”

It might come as shocking news to today’s players.

On the other hand, the 29 players who comprise what is currently the county’s top defensive football team--having allowed 3.2 points a game--appear more concerned with making a name for themselves than identifying with the past. Who can blame them?

Said fullback/linebacker Alonso Borquez: “I don’t think they’ve had a winning team since I’ve been alive.”

“I always wanted to go to San Diego, though,” Borquez added. “My brother played there. It’s my last year and we’re finally having a winning season. We’re going to try to win a championship. It’s been pretty special so far.”

And those from the days of yore are taking notice.

“I’m so excited about that 4-0,” said Dennis Maley, 44, an all-county fullback who played for the last Caver team to go 3-0, in 1964. “It’s bringing back some tremendous memories. I haven’t been to a game since 1970. Maybe I’ll go this week.”

The opponent Friday (7 p.m. at Balboa Stadium) is St. Augustine (2-2). The Saints, defending City Harbor League champions, will be San Diego’s toughest opponent to date. If the Cavers win, their chances at a playoff berth would be excellent as they go into City Central League play next week.

The Cavers, a close-knit, confident group of players who have rallied around their imposing yet charismatic coach, Art Anderson, think they have a shot at a league championship. Only one team on the remaining schedule currently has a winning record. That’s Serra, a nonleague opponent.

“We’re past the stage of just putting a team on the field,” said Anderson, a former Chicago Bears offensive tackle who lined up next to Mike Ditka in the early ‘60s. “The challenge now is to try to be league champions and do something in the playoffs.

“I know of the rich tradition here, and I thought that should be something to try to get going again, to see if we could come back. The make-up of the school is different, but I think there’s some good athletes here and it’s still a good school.”

With each victory, the Cavers are learning more about their roots.

Current athletic director and former football coach Earl Hines reached into an office cabinet and pulled out a faded blue, yellow-tasseled banner that reads “SCIF Champs 1916 1922 1955 1959.”

“I just found this,” Hines said. “It’s going back up in the gym.”

Before the CIF formed its San Diego Section in 1960, the Cavers played in the Southern Section, which encompassed Los Angeles, Orange County and El Centro as well as San Diego. The Cavers couldn’t find any competition locally, so they played most of their schedule against northern teams.

Duane Maley, Dennis Maley’s father, coached San Diego to a 97-19-3 record in 12 seasons from 1949 to 1960. The Cavers were 45-1-1 against other county teams from 1952 to the first part of the 1960 season. But fortunes started to decline after that, as the opening of other schools cut into San Diego’s enrollment and skyscrapers started to replace downtown housing.

La Jolla football Coach Dick Huddleton was part of the Escondido High team that toppled the Cavers, 19-16, in the county championships’ semifinal game in 1960.

“I remember marching into Balboa Stadium and seeing 15,000 mostly San Diego High fans,” Huddleston said. “That was the biggest crowd I had seen. They were the team to beat, always, in the section and that was one of the first times they were dethroned, not making it to the final. Seems like it was yesterday. . . . but the days of real glory have passed.”

Especially for the Cavers, who, since 1974, the year most of the current seniors were born, were 20-75-3 going into this season.

It has been 70 years since former Caver Harold “Brick” Muller became college football’s first All-American from a western university. Muller, Cort Majors, Pesky Sprott and Karl Deeds led the 1916 Cavers to a 12-0 record, which included a victory over USC’s freshman team.

All four went on to California and helped the Bears to a 28-0 victory over Ohio State in the 1921 Rose Bowl.

Magazine San Diego, in 1952, named 10 former San Diego players to its 15-member all-time All-San Diego team. Among them were Cotton Warburton and Russ Saunders, both of whom became All-Americans at USC. In one game, Warburton had touchdown runs of 75 and 80 yards. Saunders became the model for the team’s famous mascot--Tommy Trojan.

“We had a great mixture of players,” Dahms said.

“Years ago, hell, they were great,” said Joe Duke, coach of the Cavers from 1961 to 1967. “They were fun years.”

Later came Charlie Powell, who graduated in 1950 and jumped straight to the San Francisco 49ers, and Dave Grayson (Oakland Raiders), Wally Henry (Philadelphia Eagles) and Darren Comeaux (Seattle Seahawks). Grayson and Henry represented a trend that still persists at San Diego High. Both transfered to Lincoln Prep for their senior years.

The Cavers continued to enjoy a steady flow of all-county first teamers: Ezell Singleton (1958), James Snow (‘63), Michael Marrs (‘64), Doug Hunt (‘64), Lou Williams (‘69), Frank Stephens (‘73, now assistant athletic director at UCLA), Michael Hayes (‘73, ‘74) and Ed Balistreri (‘75, ‘76). Balistreri, however, was the last.

Now those names have become as obscure as Borquez, Joacque Jones, Tony Bratcher, Teule Sukumu, Marlin McWilson and Harry McDonald--standouts on the 1991 team.

Oblivious to the past, these Cavers nonetheless want to write their own paragraph in San Diego’s thick history book.

McDonald is a 5-foot-11, 228-pound senior linebacker who leads the county’s top-ranked defense with 6.5 sacks. McDonald, Robert Varnado and Tyrone Blair have combined for 17.5 sacks in four games, while the Caver defense has given up an average of 71 net yards per game. They had three shutouts going into Friday’s 21-13 victory over Mission Bay.

“I probably underestimated them a little bit,” Mission Bay Coach Jerry Surdy said. “They’re a good team and they hit a ton.”

On offense, junior quarterback Jones has engineered a double-wing running attack featuring Sukumu (39 carries, 264 yards), Bratcher (28-230) and Borquez (45-225, 5 TDs) that averages 261 yards per game and 6.5 per carry.

“We knew what they were going to do, watching the film,” Surdy said. “But they come at you from everywhere. We just couldn’t stop them.”

Of course, the Cavers could draw criticism for whom they have played thus far. Their first four opponents--Clairemont, Marian, Coronado and Mission Bay--are a combined 5-10. But the important thing for San Diego is this team is the first in years to have its junior and senior players stay together from junior varsity (where each class finished 8-2) to varsity.

“I know a lot teams don’t respect us,” McDonald said. “We’re basically underdogs, and I like that. But anything can happen when you have a bunch of guys like us who love football and have come up together.”

“The kids feel really good about themselves,” said Anderson, who turned 55 Wednesday. “But I tell them this could stop over night. ‘You lose one game, you’re history for a while.’ ”

San Diego has gone through eight coaches in 20 years while trying to recover from its drought. But the consensus is the Cavers may have found the right man in Anderson, the former Clairemont coach.

“He’s the epitome of a blue-collar, hard-working tough-guy SOB,” said Steve Miner, Anderson’s understudy at Clairemont. “He used to get in the pits with linemen and he’d show up the next day with both arms and his chest black and blue.

“He has an uncommon toughness and kindness. Downtown is not the garden spot of the city. But let’s put it this way, if it’s possible, (rebuilding the Cavers) will be done by him.”

“It vindicates me for picking him as my successor,” said Scotty Harris, 65, who has retired as San Diego’s coach and athletic director but still watches closely. “I’m really proud for San Diego High. It’s been a long time coming.”

Meanwhile, the illustrious alumni are cautiously watching and keeping their fingers crossed.

“I’m really anxious; I’m kind of jacked up,” Dahms said. “I just hope this is not a flash in the pan.”

San Diego High

The Past 10 Years

Year W L T 1981 2 6 1 1982 1 8 0 1983 5 4 1 1984 0 10 0 1985 2 8 0 1986 2 8 0 1987 1 9 0 1988 2 7 1 1989 3 7 0 1990 2 8 0