The Big Game : Football: Dorsey and Banning high schools will vie for city championship. Resentment lingers over gang violence controversy, but players say they prefer to focus on the game. Security will be tight.

Whatever you do, don’t call it a grudge match.

Dorsey and Banning high schools will fight it out on Saturday for the Los Angeles city football championship. This week, just about everyone at both schools insisted that it is time to forget the past and focus on the game.

The past, of course, has been a bit unpleasant. In October, the Banning team attracted national attention when it refused to play a game at Dorsey’s home field, citing fear of gang violence in the Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood. And when the two teams played at Banning’s field a year ago, the game ended in a melee when a disputed referee’s call gave the Wilmington school the victory in the final minutes.

Saturday’s game is scheduled for 1 p.m. at El Camino College. Players from both schools say they only want to think about football now.

“We are going to be ready to play,” said Sharmon Shah, 17-year-old running back for Dorsey. “It’s going to be an intense game, not a lot of talking. We are just coming to play.”

“For the championship, you just have to be real excited about the game,” said Brandon Moore, a safety for Banning.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials say that as many as 50 district police officers will be on duty for the game and that security will be tight. Spectators will enter the 12,000-seat stadium through metal detectors, and physical searches will be conducted as well.

“It’s a big football game and it’s primarily going to be a football crowd,” said Wesley Mitchell, chief of the school district’s police department. “Everyone is sensitive to the issues that have transpired over the last few months. I think it will be a healthy, well-played game.”

But although the game has been uppermost in the players’ minds, there is still a lingering resentment at Dorsey this week over Banning’s decision to forfeit the October game.

“Right now our players are focusing on the game, but I don’t think they have forgotten what happened,” Dorsey Coach Paul Knox said, adding, “We are proud of this team. They had a goal to get to the championship and they got there.”

School district officials have convened several meetings among parents, administrators and student leaders from the two schools in an effort to reduce tension. They even planned to have the Dorsey and Banning football teams meet for lunch this week, but players on both sides rejected the idea.

“Both teams wanted to keep their game faces on,” Banning Principal Augie Herrera explained.

Banning’s star tackle Naeem Mills insisted that the cancellation did not mean the players were angry at each other.

“You don’t have to be enemies, but you don’t want to be all friends before the game and sit down and eat with them,” he said.

“We wanted to keep it tough,” added teammate Shayzar Hawkins. “We didn’t want to get soft and get to be friends. We’ll be friends after the game.”

If there was any bitterness at Banning this week, it was lost in pregame excitement and the sound of drums and trumpets thundering across the campus each day as the school’s band and drill team prepared for the big game.

“Believe me, rewards will come your way if you work hard,” band director James Woodson said, coaching his musicians and marchers on the importance of discipline and precision.

Driven from the practice field Tuesday by cloudy skies, the 150-strong Marching Pilot Units, as the band and drill team are known, squeezed into the multipurpose room of the Wilmington school to practice their routines.

“All we’re looking forward to is winning the city championship,” said Hope Mendoza, drill team director and a secretary at the school.

But although much of the attention is focused on Saturday’s game, school officials concede there is still a need to resolve many of the underlying problems between the two schools.

Basketball players from both schools will meet on Dec. 19 as part of the ongoing effort to reduce tension. The two teams are scheduled to play each other at Dorsey on Jan. 29.

“The goal is to emphasize sportsmanship and human relationship,” said Richard L. Browning, an administrator in the high school division who helped arrange the meeting. “These athletes have a lot in common.”

Banning, however, is still appealing the city athletic board’s sanction stemming from its forfeit of the Dorsey game in October. Banning was placed on probation and required to play at Dorsey’s home stadium next season or be ineligible to compete in the playoffs.

Banning supporters still remember the 1990 melee, which resulted in a reprimand for Dorsey and suspension of four Dorsey players--a punishment that some at Banning still say was not harsh enough.

Dorsey supporters disagree.

“The whole thing was blown out of proportion,” Ava Shah, a parent of a Dorsey football player, said of the Banning response to the 1990 incident. “We had to remind them that the problem did not occur at our stadium, but at theirs.”

Julian Rodriguez, a postal worker and president of the Banning booster club, said Dorsey fans can make a big deal out of their bitterness if they wish.

“We’re not going to,” he said. “We’re just going to let the kids go down there and show what football team is the best.”

But at Dorsey, much of the bitterness is over the negative image their community received nationwide.

Dorsey’s Coach Knox reminded his players of that negative image at the end of practice this week on the school’s mud-soaked field.

“It is not only important that we win the game,” he said. “It is important that we look and act like champions. We will have no fighting or clowning around. After the game, I want you to act like gentlemen. Shake their hands and be ready to celebrate when we get back to our neighborhood.”