Moorpark Casts 1st Stone in Clash With Glendale

Word travels quickly when a football championship is on the line, which is how Quincy Johnson, a Moorpark College linebacker, made the Glendale bulletin board this week.

In a story published by the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle, Johnson was quoted as saying Saturday’s showdown at Glendale for the Western State Conference Northern Division championship was “just like any other game” to Moorpark.

Johnson also predicted Glendale would not score more than a touchdown against the Raiders’ top-ranked defense. “We thought our kids should probably see his comments,” Glendale Coach John Cicuto said. “I know to us it’s not just any other game.”

CARDER ON CALL

In addition to his jobs as Antelope Valley football coach and athletic director, Brent Carder has assumed duties as a lobbyist. With one game left, Antelope Valley, 6-2-1 and ranked 11th in the Southland, is among a handful of junior college football teams with tenuous hopes of appearing in a Dec. 5 bowl game.

If the Marauders can beat Victor Valley (5-4) on Saturday, they hope to get the call against either Glendale (8-1) or Moorpark (8-0-1) in the Western State Conference Bowl.

The winner of Saturday’s game between Glendale and Moorpark for the championship of the WSC’s Northern Division is set to play Bakersfield in the Potato Bowl. The loser will play host to the WSC’s own bowl.

Carder said he talked to representatives of Glendale and Moorpark this week “just to make sure they know we’re here.”

Antelope Valley probably should be rooting for Glendale to defeat Moorpark. If Glendale loses and becomes host of the WSC Bowl, selectors probably will be more inclined to invite regional rival Pasadena (7-2).

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Todd Lytle, a former runner and basketball player at Granada Hills High, has resurfaced on the Moorpark men’s cross-country team after a four-year hiatus from competitive sports.

Lytle, a 1987 graduate of Granada Hills, placed eighth in the Western State Conference cross-country championships Nov. 10 at Griffith Park and qualified for the state championships Saturday in Fresno.

Not bad for someone who did not start the season on the Moorpark roster and asked Coach Manny Trevino if he could train with the team only because he wanted some people to run with. “I just figured that running with the team would help me get back in shape,” Lytle said. “I didn’t expect to do much in the races, but I was the team’s first runner in the first race I ran, and here I am.”

As a senior at Granada Hills, Lytle was the No. 2 runner on a team that placed third in the 1986 City Section championships, and a forward on the basketball team that won the 1987 City 3-A Division title.

He competed in both sports for Moorpark during the 1987-88 school year before dropping out of school and beginning an odyssey that included a 14-month stint in the Air Force, a summer spent working on a fishing boat in Alaska, and attending school for various periods at Cuesta and Portland (Ore.) colleges.