Pleasant or Painful, Memories of Big Game Will Last

The Big Game.

It’s a fixture in 20th-Century American culture, combining the dual attractions of spectacle and emotion. It rescues us from the humdrum and satisfies the craving for an answer instead of more darn questions. Yes, you’ll get resolution--either wondrous exhilaration or wrenching pain. The joy will last forever. As for the pain . . . well, it may go away eventually, assuming you’ve got a lifetime or so to devote to the task.

Those are the prospects tonight when prep powerhouses Los Alamitos and Mater Dei settle an Orange County football argument on the field at Anaheim Stadium. Whatever your feelings about high school sports, at least pause to celebrate that the players are in for an experience they’ll never forget.

Mark Boyer knows all about that. Now 32, Boyer was a standout for Edison High School in Huntington Beach in the late 1970s, when its rivalry with Fountain Valley High School turned high school football players into heroic figures.

A quarterback as a junior and then a tight end as a senior, Boyer remembers the games with Fountain Valley as if they were yesterday, instead of half his lifetime ago. Like Los Alamitos, Edison had a long winning streak during Boyer’s playing days. And so big was the rivalry with Fountain Valley that even the teams’ regular-season games were played at Anaheim Stadium.

“As soon as the game from Friday the week before was over, everyone understood that next week was Fountain Valley,” Boyer recalled this week, “so everything we did in practice, from running extra wind sprints to extra bench presses, everything was geared to beating the Barons.”

Boyer knows what Los Al and Mater Dei kids have been thinking this week. It’s a surreal merger of euphoria and nerves--euphoria at being the center of attention and nerves perhaps so taut that sleep is difficult. “Oh, you fall asleep at night,” Boyer said, “but when you wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing you think about.

“The players try to focus on the game, and the coaches tell you to focus on the game, but you can’t help but hear other kids at school talking about it during the week--the band members, cheerleaders, the kid sitting next to you in math class talking about who’s going to the game with who--and you’re thinking, ‘They’re going to be there watching me.’ ”

What about being a 17-year-old and the fear of failure?

“For myself, there was definitely nervousness, but once you’re on the field and playing, it’s fun being out there under the lights. It’s like the lights are on you. You’ve got to remember as a player that you worked hard, that you started back in February working for this moment and now it’s Friday night and you’re in front of your peers, your mom and dad and people in the area are here to watch you, and all that work you put in behind the scenes is now going to come out in the next couple hours.

“I think there definitely is fear there, but for me it wasn’t fear of letting someone down; it was just nervousness, knowing everyone was watching you. It’s a fear, but it’s more of an excitement.”

I asked Boyer what he remembered about playing at the Big A. “That is the most incredible deal, because here you are, you’ve been playing at junior college and high school fields, now all of a sudden you’re in this place. . . . You enter the locker room and here you’re sitting in front of your jersey and your equipment at your locker and you think, ‘What superstar had this locker? And here I am at this same locker. Was it Reggie Jackson or Nolan Ryan, or what Ram? And now I’m in this locker room. Now, I’m the star, people are coming to watch me.’ It’s a big-time feeling. There’s a long tunnel out to the stadium from both dugouts, and to walk out and hear the band and the roar of the crowd coming in, I’ll always remember that, walking out under the lights and feeling, ‘This is incredible.’ ”

I asked Boyer if he remembered anything about his coach’s pregame pep talk. “I can’t give you the specific things said, but we locked ourselves into a room a couple hours before the game and the whole team would sit around with one of the coaches, and this sounds goofy, but we were bonding as a group of guys and everyone could share in the excitement if someone had something to say. I’ll always remember those times. That’s when we felt it was us against the world.”

Boyer’s team won both games against Fountain Valley his last two years. He went on to play at USC and then eight years in the National Football League. He’s now an investment broker. He married one of the Edison cheerleaders, has four daughters and lives in the school neighborhood.

His perspective on the games against Fountain Valley? “Looking back on my career and thinking of some of those big games I played in--I played in the Rose Bowl and in front of a national audience in the pros on Monday Night Football--but looking back on being a kid 16, 17, years old and playing in Anaheim Stadium in front of all those people, it’s like the biggest thing. It’s incredible. In relation to the age I was, I think it was as big as anything I ever played in.”

I doubt if the Big Game emotions of high school players have changed since Boyer played for Edison. If he could talk to every Los Al and Mater Dei player today, he’d tell them not to worry about being nervous, that the anxiety will go away with the game’s first contact and that their teammates will help them through.

But most of all, he’d tell them to enjoy the evening. He’d tell them to drink in the crowd and the lights and the scoreboard and the cheering and the fans. He’d tell them this may be one of the most memorable nights of their lives and that it’d be a shame to let it slip by without appreciating it.

Because even at the tender age of 32, he knows something these kids don’t: “Time just goes by fast,” he said. “When I was in high school, it used to seem like it took forever for the season to get here. Now it flies by.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.