No More Burdens to Bear : Carpinteria Bows Out of Football Series With Moorpark After 51st Win in a Row

As the referee signaled a first down for Carpinteria High last Friday night, Moorpark High defensive players stood around in quiet desperation and watched the final seconds disappear off the scoreboard clock. In the stands, chants of “Beat Carp” diminished to whispers, then to painful silence. Another year, another bitter loss--the staggering 51st in a row to their archrivals from Santa Barbara County--but with a difference.

Since 1935, when Carp began its incredible mastery over the Musketeers with a 25-0 win, Moorpark players and fans at least have always held out hope that victory was only a season away.

Now, however, there is no more “Wait till next year.” Time has finally run out on the Musketeers: A few months ago, Carpinteria announced that this season’s game would be the last in the series, which dates to 1928. The clock won’t ever start again.

When Carpinteria escaped with a 28-26 win last Friday, the cold hand of reality slapped the Musketeers in the face. Hard. Their last chance had slipped away. Like death, it was difficult to accept, awful in its finality. No more opportunities to avenge their city’s annual ego-bashing. Or be immortalized as the team that finally beat Carp and put a merciful end to “the streak.”

Like Mighty Casey, the Musketeers had struck out in their final at-bat. There would be no joy in Mudville. And players wept. “It’s sad they don’t want to play us any more,” said 338-pound junior defensive tackle Mike Cruz, teary-eyed as he and his equally depressed and dazed teammates milled around after the game. “The rest of the season didn’t matter to us. We just wanted to win this game.”

So did everybody else in Moorpark. “There is so much pressure from the community,” Coach Rob Dearborn said before the game. The streak had become an embarrassment, a symbol of frustration and failure passed down from generation to generation. Dearborn estimated that 20% of his current players’ fathers were former Musketeers who, like their sons, had been crushed by the jack boot of Carp’s domination. The cumulative total score during the streak: Carpinteria 1,728, Moorpark 259.

“It’s been an ugly era,” Dearborn said.

As the streak--believed to be the longest in high school football--kept snowballing over the years, players from both teams felt the yoke of history on their backs. While Moorpark’s mission was to snap the streak, Carp players were under extreme pressure to keep it going. Beating Moorpark had become a rite of passage, but the implications of losing the last game between the schools put an additional burden on this year’s team.

“It’s kind of like a scary feeling,” said Son Ngo, quarterback of the Warriors. “You want to block it out.”

But that proved to be impossible. Too much was at stake. And the prospect of losing weighed heavily on the Warriors: They all knew it would be a stigma they would carry with them for the rest of their lives.

“Five years from now,” Carp Coach Ben Hallock said, “you’d show up at a game and you know what you’d hear? ‘You played on that team?’ ”

Hallock, in his second year at Carp, also had an 800-pound gorilla on his shoulders: Being the coach who couldn’t even beat Moorpark wouldn’t look too good on his resume. In motivating himself and his players for this year’s game, he tried to downplay what he called “the fear side . . . I don’t like to use it,” he said, “but it’s there. How would you like to be on the first team to lose to Moorpark since 1935?”

In Carpinteria, a laid-back beach town 15 miles north of Ventura, it was a comforting thought that even in the worst of times, the community could count on being cheered up by a victory over Moorpark. “No matter how bad our team was, (the game) was a sure win,” said Marty Macias, a barber who played for Carp in the early 1940s.

The rivalry was destined to end, however, when Moorpark was transformed from what old-time Carp residents dubbed a town of “bean farmers” into a Los Angeles suburb. Over the past decade, the population doubled, subdivisions replaced orchards and a new, larger high school took the place of one that was built in 1919. While Carpinteria High remained about 700 students, Moorpark ballooned to 1,200 and is expected to reach at least 1,800.

The city’s burgeoning size is what gave Moorpark football fans a sense of hope--an increased player pool certainly would provide the decisive edge over Carp--but, ironically, it was growth that ultimately doomed their chances of continuing the rivalry and someday defeating the Warriors.

According to Hallock, Carpinteria decided last spring to eliminate the Musketeers from its schedule after the Southern Section announced plans to move Moorpark from the Division IX Tri-Valley League--in which both schools are charter members--to the Division VIII Frontier League in 1992.

Despite their attachment to the yearly feel-good ritual of trouncing Moorpark--there were 27 shutouts, including a 194-0 differential during a four-game stretch in the early ‘80s--the people of Carpinteria didn’t protest their school’s decision to write the final chapter. “There was nothing from the community,” Hallock said.

Nothing. “I hate to see the rivalry go,” said former Carp player Tony Jimenez, whose son Tim plays for this year’s team, “but Moorpark High is getting so big.”

The Musketeers, however, did a lot of howling. The series could have continued on a nonleague basis.

While nobody from Moorpark actually called the Warriors “chicken,” the consensus was that Carp was wriggling out of the series to avoid the inevitable defeat; the laws of probability were on Moorpark’s side.

“They made a big deal out of not playing any more,” Hallock said. “Let’s face it: They wanted to keep playing until they beat us.”

No kidding, says Dearborn. “The biggest thing,” he said, “is that they made the decision to end it--it wasn’t mutual--and that’s why we got really upset. We also don’t happen to think their reasons are valid--they play bigger schools than us--but they just wanted to end on a positive note.”

And that wasn’t as easy as it had been in the past. Last Friday night, the Musketeers managed to keep the outcome in doubt for most of the game, which had been expected to be another blowout. But despite the teams’ records going into the game (Moorpark 1-8, Carp 7-2), the Musketeers came closer to winning than any of their 50 predecessors. Previously, Carp’s smallest victory margin had been four points.

Moorpark’s performance surprised Carp players. “I didn’t really expect it to be this close,” said Warrior tailback Sean Lohse, but the Musketeers had been able to elevate their game thanks to a large dose of inspiration. On the eve of battle, with emotions red-lined by a pep rally bonfire, the Moorpark players had made a supreme sacrifice as a gesture of team solidarity--they shaved their heads--and then turned the razor on Dearborn, shearing the mustache he had cultivated for 10 years.

And after his pregame speech, in which Dearborn told the solemn players that they were “a bridge between the past and the future,” the Musketeers swarmed outside, banging helmeted heads on the door jam and shouting, “Let’s go crazy!”

The last time Moorpark beat Carpinteria--by a 13-6 score in 1934--the country was in the middle of a depression, but unfortunately for Musketeers, the current recession didn’t turn out to be an omen. Neither was the Moorpark junior varsity’s win over the Carpinteria junior varsity earlier in the day--the first time Moorpark had won the junior varsity game in 30 years.

In the varsity game, two missed extra points and a near-miss on a two-point conversion were the difference. That and a 302-yard rushing performance by Lohse, who was glad to see the last of the Musketeers.

“There was a lot of pressure,” the bruising 175-pound senior said. “I’m relieved--real relieved--that it’s over.”

Dearborn too was relieved. Maybe he can no longer fantasize about beating Carp--and then getting elected mayor--but at least he doesn’t ever have to worry about perpetuating the streak. “Now we have the opportunity to put all this behind us,” he said. “It gives our program a chance to be reborn. I like that. It’s our theme for next year.”

Still, as the lights dimmed at Moorpark Memorial Field, the words of a Carpinteria old-timer came to mind. Marcus Cravens, who played for the Warriors in their first game against Moorpark, a 12-8 loss in 1928, was asked a few years ago what would happen if the rivalry had to end before the Musketeers could defeat Carp, and he said, “The streak will be forever.”

Cravens died last year at the age of 79. His words no doubt will haunt the Musketeers like the ghost of football past.