Five O.C. Schools Field Eight-Man Teams : Sports: Squads’ size is mostly a reflection of small student bodies.

A slightly bigger relative of six-man football is the eight-man variation played by five Orange County schools: California Lutheran and Liberty Christian in Huntington Beach, St. Margaret’s in San Juan Capistrano, Heritage Christian in Fullerton and Garden Grove Claremont.

The first four are members of the Academy League, and Claremont belongs to the Express League, both in the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section.

The field is 80 yards long by 40 wide, instead of the 100-by-53 1/2 yards for a conventional, 11-man field. The games are essentially the same, except the scores are generally higher and there is a 45-point mercy rule, meaning games are halted if one team is beating the other by that margin in the second half. The rule is intended to protect players on outmanned teams from getting hurt.

Most of the schools involved in eight-man football do it because they lack a large student body. California Lutheran, for instance, has only 62 students and Heritage Christian has just 60.

Forty-nine Southern Section teams play eight-man in two divisions; the top third plays in a large-school division, and the other two-thirds play in a small division. St. Margaret’s, which has about 150 high-school-age students, won the section’s Eight-Man Small Division title in 1989 and was runner-up in 1987.

“It’s really a fun game to play or officiate,” said Scott Cathcart, publicist for the Southern Section and Long Beach Officials’ Assn member. “It’s like getting a couple of your friends and going down to the park to play. It’s a real offensive game.”

Eight-man does not necessarily mean diminished individual talent. Rashaan Salaam of Country Day School in La Jolla, which plays a mostly eight-man schedule, is considered by many scouts to be the state’s most talented player. He ran for 412 yards and seven touchdowns in a 72-23 victory over San Diego Francis Parker last weekend and is a top college prospect.