El Toro-Mission Viejo Rivalry in Football Just Goes With the Territory

Like the airline jingle goes, “Something special’s in the air.”

That something, according to El Toro and Mission Viejo football players, is the atmosphere of anticipation driven by one of the county’s fiercest rivalries.

“Oh yeah, it’s different all right, it’s huge, it’s Mission week,” said senior Jeff Stenstrom, an El Toro linebacker who described the heightened expectations during the week leading to the game. “There’s definitely more excitement, more enthusiasm (than for other games). All the students get into it. A ton of people show up.”

This Friday, a standing-room-only crowd is anticipated for the 19th installment of the series that dates to 1974, when El Toro opened the rivalry with a 22-20 victory. Last year, Mission Viejo won, 20-14.

It is generally agreed that proximity is the No. 1 ingredient to a great rivalry, and as these schools are a hop, skip and jump from each other, Mission Viejo and El Toro certainly qualify.

But is there anything that makes this South County rivalry any different from the rest?

History, for one.

“It’s a rivalry that goes back pretty far for this league,” Stenstrom said.

But the obvious difference, at least this season, is the coaching changes; former El Toro Coach Bob Johnson and assistant Marty Spalding crossed rival school lines.

“Just the fact that Marty and Bob are coaching here now makes it different,” Mission Viejo senior wide receiver Matt Denny said.

Denny comes from a family with a measure of Diablo tradition. Denny’s brother, Bill, was a standout linebacker from 1989-91 and their father, Bill Sr., has been a defensive coordinator at Mission Viejo for the last five seasons.

Matt said he didn’t grow up learning to despise the former El Toro coaches he now plays for, but admitted he has mixed feelings about his close ties with what used to be considered the enemy.

“It’s not like I hated them, but it was kind of weird at first,” he said. “But as soon as I got to know them, that changed everything.”

Both sides stressed--although not in the heat of the game--that theirs is a friendly, clean rivalry. And Spalding, who was passed over for El Toro’s head coaching job when Johnson left after 1990, has no ax to grind.

“I’m going to disappoint you,” he said. “We have to beat anyone, it just happens to be El Toro this week. . . . We want to beat them as much as we wanted to beat Capistrano Valley. I know you want me to say, ‘I want to beat (them) and burn the town down,’ but all I want to do is win a game.”

Spalding may not hold a grudge against his former school, but there was a time when he held Mission Viejo in the highest contempt.

“I truly hated Mission,” he said. “There were attitudes that prevailed at this school that I didn’t like. Like they were a cut above.”

As much as an entire community can get caught up in the hype, which may or may not have increased this year because of the coaching situation, rivalries are reserved primarily for the student body.

“Marty and I and Bob are too old to play, and we’ve lost our eligibility,” El Toro Coach Mike Milner said. “We really don’t have much to do with it anyway. It’s about school against school, kids against kids. A lot of these kids grew up together, play other sports against each other and spend the summers together.”

The Chargers and Diablos don’t play for a trophy or a statue, “just bragging rights,” said Stenstrom, who played junior All-American football with Matt Denny.

That can be enough, and this year it may have to be. Unlike the rivalry in the mid to late 1980s, when both schools were among the county’s elite, this season they are in the middle of the bell curve, with Mission Viejo at 3-3 and El Toro sporting a 3-2 start.

“When the teams are ranked, there’s a league championship or a playoff berth on the line, it makes a difference,” said Keith Sims, Mission Viejo activities director. “When none of those are happening, it loses a bit of its luster.”

For the fans, maybe, but not the players.

“It’s always going to be important, no matter whether one team is having a great year or not,” said Stenstrom.

Coaches don’t do anything special, and don’t really need to, to get their kids up for this kind of game.

“You don’t have to talk them into emotionally getting ready,” Milner said. “That type of rivalry is passed down from class to class, from team to team. People remember last year’s score. They can hardly wait to play the game as juniors, then as seniors, they look forward to it having been there once.

“It’s not necessary to look for motivational devices and psychological approaches to get ready for this football game.”