CALIFORNIA ALBUM : An End Run Around Obscurity : In Bloomington, the football team’s triumph has given a much-needed boost to community pride.

Until the local football team hit the field and ran into the national record books, there had not been a lot to cheer about in this obscure farming community in industrial-strength San Bernardino County.

Straddling Interstate 10 and a railroad switching yard 50 miles east of Los Angeles, the town has fallen between the cracks, an unincorporated community struggling for identity.

Neighboring cities of Colton, Fontana and Rialto were gobbling up land through annexations. The only bank in town closed, and the Teamsters took it over as a union hall. Bloomington’s largest employers--a cement yard, a cookie bakery and a candy factory--moved away too.

Old-timers still raise their cows and goats on half-acre lots, but salvage yards, used furniture stores and massage parlors now scar the Midwestern texture of the town.

Even the Chamber of Commerce president, after talking about the need to clean up junk lots and tumbleweeds and graffiti, apologized later for sounding so negative.

But thanks to a ragtag collection of football players at the high school who this season conquered end zones like an unstoppable army, Bloomington is finally getting some respect.

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Last year, the Bruins of Bloomington High could muster only a 1-9 record. But with a new coach this year, the squad--so small that half of its members play both offense and defense--won its first game, 86 to 0. And the second game, 84 to 0. And the next, 62 to 9.

The team blew away the opposition game after game, racking up a season average of 64 points per game.

And last week--while beating Laguna Hills High School in a CIF semifinal game that was its closest contest yet, 34-21--Bloomington blew away a 19-year-old national record. The Bruins posted the highest number of points--832--ever scored by a prep football team in a single season. The alumni at Big Sandy High School, the previous record-holder, can now only cry in their Texas long-necks.

Tonight the Bruins travel to La Mirada High School for the CIF Division 8 championship and, win or lose, they will probably add more frosting to their cake.

And so these days, it is not just roosters that are crowing in Bloomington, population 20,000.

“Everyone’s pretty fired up about the team,” said barber Louie Villagran. “I hear the Lions Club is gonna have a dinner to honor them. A lot of people didn’t even know there’s a Bloomington. But now, that’s changing.”

Next door, typewriter repairman Charlie Dodd--who, apropos the local time warp, prefers working on archaic manuals rather than those newfangled “electro mechanical” ones--echoes the town’s new upbeat attitude.

“When’s the last time we’ve been in the news? For anything good, it’s probably been years,” he said.

At MGM Burgers, owner George Economy said he can’t keep up with the demand for his restaurant’s T-shirts. They’re more popular than ever, he said, because, finally, people do not mind wearing a shirt that says “Bloomington” on it.

The most pronounced shift in attitudes is at the high school itself. Assistant Principal Roger Kowalski--who graduated from Bloomington 30 years ago--talks of new campus self-esteem among the 1,450 students, showing off a bulletin board crammed with local and national press clippings.

Stella Abril, the football squad’s team mother, said: “A lot of kids on campus are now wanting to do better in everything they do.”

Football coach Don Markham says he is getting “attaboys” from teachers because the success on the field is spilling into the classrooms. “The students aren’t as rowdy this year,” he said. “They’ve got pride. And the teachers are telling me, ‘You’ve made my job this year so easy.’ ”

School board trustee Maria Lopez-Carson said: “The football team has shown all the kids that dedication to achieve means success can be obtained.”

So is Markham the local hero? “The entire football team are heroes,” Lopez-Carson said.

Despite the team’s celebrity, no one expects any wholesale changes in Bloomington’s small town ambience, a place where the 4-H Club, equestrian competitions and Little League games seem to draw more youngsters than do gangs.

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Bloomington was founded as a farming community before the turn of the century, and most of its modest housing stock was built just after World War II. To this day, horses are ridden down neighborhood streets and residents sell vegetables, rabbit fryers and quail from their homes.

Several decades ago, Bloomington was the largest and best-known community along this stretch of Interstate 10 between Ontario and San Bernardino. But as other communities incorporated and urbanized, Bloomington jealously maintained its roots as a home for independent people who eschewed rules and regulations and adopted a live-and-let-live attitude. Some residents guardedly use the term redneck to describe the town’s earlier personality.

“People here are proud, and want to be left alone,” said Ron Losee, chairman of the Municipal Advisory Committee, an advisory panel to the County Board of Supervisors.

“But as a result, and as other cities take land from us, we’ve lost our identity,” he said. “People who lived here would say they were from Rialto or Fontana. If you said you were from Bloomington, people would ask, ‘Indiana?’ ”

“But now, the football team is turning that around for us.”

* RUN TO GLORY: Coach brings record success to school with double wing. C1