An Underdog Bones Up : Surprising Chatsworth Prepares to Face Crenshaw in City Section 3-A Division Football Final

Tucked into a corner of the Chatsworth High boys’ locker area, the football team’s “Drying Room” is a place where most mortals would not dare tread.

The room is dark and dank, has no windows and precious little in the way of ventilation. Pipes run across the ceiling. A trainer’s table occupies most of the floor space. Only Chatsworth’s football regulars and coaches are permitted to enter.

As for its name, gear and uniforms are stored in the room, where, theoretically, the equipment dries in time for practice the following day. This is not always the case.

Often, there is enough residual perspiration to leave nary a dry eye in the house, especially among those who are first to enter. It is “drying” in reverse.

“You think it’s bad now? You should be the first one to open the door,” Coach Myron Gibford said. “Whew-weeee.”

The Eau de Chatsworth olfactory assault is that of the typical locker room--gamy gear stuffed in a gym bag and left to stew in its juices. Its aural equivalent is a chain saw, its visual match a greenish, plaid golf shirt.

Ask a player about the malodorous air and shrugs abound. To them, the place perhaps parallels Chatsworth’s unlikely ascent to tonight’s City Section 3-A Division final: It ain’t pretty, but it’s us.

“We expected to be here,” said senior linebacker Andy Daniele. “This is what we worked so hard for.”

If ever there was a year for Chatsworth to make its improbable move, this is it. The theme, “from worst-to-first,” initially picked up steam during the major league baseball pennant races, when a pair of teams that finished in the divisional cellar a year ago ended up battling in the World Series.

Chatsworth will play top-seeded Crenshaw (9-4) for the title at Birmingham High tonight at 7:30. Both teams finished last in their respective leagues in 1990 and were moved in the off-season from the 4-A to 3-A Division. Both won league titles this fall.

What better year for a reversal of fortune? After all, 1991 turned backward reads just the same, and Chatsworth surely has pulled an end-around. From a 2-8 finish a year ago, Chatsworth is 9-4 and champion of the North Valley League.

Almost to a man, Chatsworth fits the underdog description. From a distance, the team looks as physical as any. Upon closer inspection, however, scale becomes more evident.

“These are our monsters,” Gibford said, surveying the practice field. “What do you think?”

The Chancellors’ game program--which would never pass an audit by the Department of Weights and Measures--lists just three players at 6-foot-2 or taller. Ask Gibford about the size of one of his charges and the typical response is, “if that.”

“Size doesn’t really matter,” said Mark Skillicorn, a 5-9, 155-pound outside linebacker. “As long as you believe you can do it.”

Quickness and heart are Chatsworth’s biggest attributes. Skillicorn’s grit earned him a starting job, and his overachieving style best reflects that of the team. Three months ago, after two seasons of playing for the B team, Skillicorn tried out for the varsity amid much skepticism.

“I remember telling a coach, ‘He’ll never play,’ ” Gibford recalled. “That was my exact quote.”

Here’s another one: “That little pipsqueak has been our most consistent defensive player,” Gibford said.

Skillicorn and Daniele are key elements in a defense that has yielded an average of only 189.5 yards a game. In last week’s 17-14 semifinal defeat of Roosevelt, Chatsworth twice turned away the Rough Riders in goal-to-go situations.

“When we’re in the goal-line (situation), we get hyped up even more because we know it’s going to be hard for anyone to score on us,” said defensive lineman Rozheh Nahapetian, who along with Skillicorn is an All-Northwest Valley Conference selection.

Nahapetian was born in Armenia, moved for a short time to Australia, and as a 4-year-old, relocated with his family to the United States. Nahapetian has been nicknamed “Naha,” by the coaching staff.

Ah ha. A secret weapon, and a mobile one at that. At 5-8, 200 pounds, Nahapetian disappears when he is blocked by bigger offensive players. But he has his own tactical devices. “I don’t try to outmuscle,” said Nahapetian, one of just three junior starters on defense. “I try to outmaneuver.”

Located just down the line is junior defensive end Kyle Ramin, who at 6-4 is easily the team’s tallest player, standing a full helmet above many of his teammates. Gibford said he found Ramin in an adaptive physical education class, where Ramin was trying to recover from spinal meningitis.

“He isn’t real fast yet,” Gibford said. “But he’s coming along.”

Similar stories abound. Eddie Ramos was yanked off the soccer and baseball fields and turned into the team’s kicker. Ramos, who scored the winning goal to give Chatsworth the City soccer title last winter, had never played football.

Ramos started at third base for the baseball team last spring, and when his mother found out he was skipping winter-league baseball to play football, she was incensed.

“Oh, man, was she upset,” said Ron Martinez, one of Gibford’s assistants. “But she feels pretty good about it now.”

Like many of his teammates, Ramos came of age quickly. In the second week of the season, Ramos kicked the winning field goal from 26 yards with 20 seconds remaining to give Chatsworth a 24-22 victory over Sylmar.

“The guy’s played in one game, and he tells the linemen, ‘If you block for me, I’ll kick it,’ ” Martinez said. “He’s a different kind of kid. Pressure doesn’t seem to bother him.”

Chatsworth, in short, is a different kind of team. It doesn’t rely on the pass . . . or the run. Offensively, the Chancellors have survived because of balance and a veteran offensive line, which averages 230 pounds and contains four returning starters.

Senior quarterback Brian Comer (5-10, 165) has received the lion’s share of publicity, and has passed for 1,076 yards, an average of only 83 yards a game.

Senior running back Montay Hardison (5-10, 185) leads the ground attack with 811 yards, which wouldn’t overload the smallest of pocket calculators.

Neither player has had what would be considered a storybook season. Despite leading area City passers for most of the year, Comer struggled in the second half of the regular season and was benched in favor of David Muir, a junior. Comer has since reclaimed the position.

Hardison was benched at midseason because Gibford didn’t think Hardison “ran well.” Hardison gained 141 yards in 33 carries against Roosevelt and carried the offense on his broad shoulders.

Should anyone think there is friction between Comer and Muir, the pair was spotted at practice this week giving each other piggyback rides as the team left the field.

“Our philosophy is that you’ve gotta produce,” Gibford said. “If you don’t, you’re out of there. That applies to everybody.”

The sum of these rather disparate parts is a team that has yet to be whipped. Chatsworth lost to 4-A Division teams San Fernando by eight points, Granada Hills by two and Kennedy by 13.

Against Kennedy, a 4-A semifinalist, Chatsworth held a four-point lead at halftime. “Between the white lines, nobody’s beaten us,” Gibford said. “On the scoreboard, yeah. But nobody’s kicked our butts on the field.”

The team’s worst defeat came in a 21-7 loss to Los Angeles in the season opener, a game that was played at Chatsworth. The loss planted a strange seed in the players’ collective noggin.

Before the season opener, Chatsworth’s seniors voted for the team to play its home games in orange jerseys and pants. When Chatsworth took the field, it looked like the Attack of the Killer Carrots or a Caltrans crew heading toward the catering truck.

Unfortunately, the team exhibited all of the life of a Caltrans crew too. Plenty of eye-catching color, but not much in the way of results.

Chatsworth lost to Los Angeles, then lost at home to Kennedy and Granada Hills. When Chatsworth played host to El Camino Real in its homecoming game Nov. 15, the orange pants were replaced by white ones and Chatsworth stripped the Conquistadores, 19-0.

Last week’s victory over Roosevelt, in fact, marked the team’s second victory in five tries at home. To virtually every player’s relief, tonight’s game will be played elsewhere.

“Maybe the bus ride pumps us up,” said Daniele, who calls the defensive signals. “We concentrate more on the game and there are less locker-room antics.”

The Chancellors are 7-1 on the road--in white pants and tops--and players have taken to calling themselves the “Road Killers.”

Though the players maintain their success has not come as a surprise, the victory circle remains a new experience for some. One player, All-North Valley League offensive lineman Ralph Testa, recently admitted that he had never before played on a winning team, his youth football and baseball days included.

“That made me feel pretty good,” said Gibford, who coached Chatsworth to its last City football title in 1979.

Goose bumps are a sign of the times. So is the tiny poster that Gibford strategically placed three months ago for the starters to see.

In the Drying Room hangs the hand-painted sign, put there by Gibford on the first day of full-contact practice. It reads, “From the Outhouse to the Penthouse,” a saying that over the years has gotten plenty of motivational mileage, though you couldn’t prove it by polling the players.

“I never heard it before,” Daniele said. “It’s new to me.”

So is this City championship stuff. One thing is a lock, however. If Chatsworth wins, there won’t be a dry eye in the locker room, which will smell sweeter than the roses of victory.