He Takes a Thrashing AND Comes Up Passing

The road to success in football has taken Frank Ramirez, quarterback for North Torrance High, on several hazardous turns. One such detour came during a dash for the end zone in a freshman game three years ago.

“It was my second game of the season and I really didn’t know how to play in pads,” Ramirez said. “I used to run with my head up. I was about to score a touchdown when three guys hit me right in the middle of my stomach.”

As often happens when shoulder pads and stomach collide, Ramirez went down gasping for air.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “It was the first time I was ever hit hard.”

The first, but not the last.

In four years of playing quarterback at North, the last three on the varsity level, Ramirez has taken his share of lumps.

There was the time as a sophomore when a nervous Ramirez, playing in his first varsity game for injured starter Brian Jurado, turned the wrong way on an attempted handoff and wound up face-to-face with a charging South Torrance defensive end.

“He just killed me,” Ramirez said.

Then there was the nonleague game last season when Serra’s defense, led by the rough-and-tumble linebacker duo of Corey and Chris Long, drummed a steady beat on Ramirez’s chest in a 45-25 North defeat. Ramirez passed for 350 yards and four touchdowns but ended up in the hospital with bruised lungs.

“That was the roughest game I’ve ever been in,” he said. “Corey Long hit me all night, from the first play to the last.”

This season, Ramirez was smashed to the ground Sept. 25 in a 41-13 victory over Beverly Hills.

“He laid there with his face in the dirt for about five minutes,” North Coach Joe Austin said. “He didn’t move a muscle. We thought he was dead.”

Mama said there would be days like this. In fact, if it were up to Rosemary Ramirez, her eldest son never would have taken a snap at North.

“I never wanted him to play,” she said.

Fortunately for North, Ramirez decided the thrill of playing football outweighed the occasional bumps and bruises. Perhaps more than any quarterback in the South Bay, the 6-foot, 170-pound senior has shown he can take a thrashing and keep on passing.

“If he takes a shot, he’ll feel it,” Austin said. “But he’s never had to miss a game. He’s always bounced back.”

Said Rosemary Ramirez: “I can’t keep him down. They hit him and he comes right back for more. He always tells me he’s fine.”

Ramirez momentarily had to leave Friday’s game against Peninsula after getting hit on the right elbow. He returned to pass for 216 yards and three touchdowns, leading North to a 20-9 victory.

With a 4-0 start, the Saxons have already equaled their victory total from last season, when they finished 4-5-1. North is ranked No. 1 in the Southern Section Division IX media poll and No. 4 in the state Division III ratings by Cal-Hi Sports magazine.

Ramirez has played a big part in the team’s resurgence, completing 46 of 75 passes (65%) for 763 yards and 10 touchdowns, with only four interceptions.

Although those numbers are slightly down from last season, when Ramirez passed for 2,099 yards and 22 TDs, the quarterback said he would gladly trade personal statistics for victories.

“As long as we keep winning, it doesn’t matter how many yards I get,” he said.

North tries to extend its winning streak at 7:30 Friday night when it plays host to Mira Costa (2-1-1) in a nonleague game.

Although Ramirez is the one player North could ill afford to lose--”We’d be hurting without Frank,” Austin said--he is by no means the only weapon in the Saxons’ arsenal. Running backs Dano Casillas, Chi Lam and Lacy Watkins, wide receiver Dean Halverson and tight end Jared Meyers also play big roles on a balanced offense that has rushed for 655 yards and passed for 768.

“Everybody basically can catch,” Austin said. “(Ramirez) has a lot of different ways he can go.”

Aside from enjoying his teammates’ talents, Ramirez also enjoys their company. He didn’t feel that way about many of last year’s seniors.

“I was the starting quarterback, but I still felt that I wasn’t a part of the team,” he said. “Guys during the game would get down on me if I threw an interception. Or if I got hurt, they’d say things like, ‘You’re weak.’

“This year, if I make a mistake, guys say, ‘It’s all right, you’ll do better next time.’ It makes me a lot more comfortable.”

Said Austin: “Last year wasn’t much fun because we didn’t win.”

North and Ramirez started the season impressively with a 41-27 victory over Artesia, which was 11-1 in 1991 and whose quarterback, Aaron Flowers, passed for 3,954 yards as a junior, the second-best total in the state.

Ramirez completed 13 of 19 passes, with no interceptions, for 255 yards and three touchdowns. Flowers was 17 for 32, for 261 yards and one TD. One of his passes was intercepted.

“Ramirez totally outplayed Flowers,” said Greg Dies, president of the Westminster-based Para-Dies Scouting service. “He’s a hell of a football player. He’s poised in the pocket, he has nice zip on the ball, and he seems to be on top of things. I really like him.

“If he was 6-4 or 6-5, he’d have college recruiters drooling all over him.”

Dies says Ramirez has the talent to play on the NCAA Division I level, but Ramirez remains unsure if he wants to pursue football after high school. His other option is baseball. A shortstop, he batted .521 last spring for North to earn All-Pioneer League and All-Southern Section honors.

“Probably because of my size, I won’t play football (in college),” he said. “I will try to play baseball in college.”

Ramirez began playing Little League baseball when he was 9, but didn’t get involved in organized football until he entered North.

“I wasn’t really into football until high school,” he said. “Everybody was playing it, so I thought it was the thing to do.”

That decision didn’t sit well with Ramirez’s mother, who thought her son was too small and inexperienced to play football. Rosemary Ramirez watched worriedly from the stands when Frank had the wind knocked out of him in a freshman game against Bishop Montgomery.

“After he was hit so hard against Bishop Montgomery, I said, ‘That’s it. You’re not going to play anymore,’ ” she said.

The next week, though, Ramirez was back on the field for North.

“We always let our boys make their own decisions,” Rosemary Ramirez said. “It’s been OK so far, as long as he doesn’t get hurt.”

Ramirez probably has avoided more serious injury because of his ability to avoid the rush.

“He has the ability to find the open guy and he’s quick enough to scramble out of trouble,” Austin said. “He turns nothing into something.”

Peninsula Coach Gary Kimbrell came away impressed after watching Ramirez pick apart his team’s secondary last week.

“He’s real poised,” Kimbrell said. “He’s tough and he plays with a lot of confidence. After looking at the film, I think he’s very, very accurate as a passer. We had guys around their (receivers), and he still got the ball to them.”

Ramirez’s first receiver was his younger brother, Matt, a ninth-grader who plays on North’s freshman team. But it doesn’t appear the Saxons have another quarterback in the making. Matt is a 6-1, 240-pound defensive lineman.

“They’re like night and day, totally different,” Rosemary Ramirez said of her sons. “Matthew is very calm. He gives you 100% on the field, but if his team loses it’s still OK. Not Frank, he really wants to win.

“If Frank loses, he doesn’t like it at all.”

So far this season, Ramirez has gone home happy on Friday.