THE GREAT DIVIDE : Separated by Only 40 Miles, San Pedro and Taft Are Still a World Apart

They will drive up the Harbor Freeway together, nearly 8,000 strong, getting on where the 110 begins in San Pedro and getting off at the Coliseum.

Many San Pedro High football fans have not missed a play during the Pirates’ 13-0 run into tonight’s City Section Division 4-A title, and some, like 1935 graduate Bill “Tiger” Reese, have not missed a game in years.

“People in San Pedro are very intense about their team,” said Reese, the public address announcer at San Pedro home games.

A few miles up the freeway, Cedric, La Tonya and Kenneth Black will start their drive up the 110, cutting over from their house on 121st Street. They are not part of the San Pedro group, seeing as how Cedric and La Tonya are the parents, and Kenneth the grandfather of Lonnel Black, a defensive lineman for Woodland Hills Taft, whose team will play San Pedro tonight at 8.

“We are going to this game, but we haven’t been able to go to many of [Lonnel’s] games,” Kenneth Black said. “It’s just too far [about 35 miles] and with all that traffic. . . . We want to, but we can’t.”

One school has a sense of community probably unique in Los Angeles, the other is made up of transplants and transfers. Perhaps only in Los Angeles could two schools so different and from such contrasting communities meet for the city championship.

“It is unusual,” City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege said. “They are definitely two very different types of communities.”

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San Pedro Coach Mike Walsh was sitting in the locker room earlier this week, trying to describe the people in the community of about 76,000, where he was born.

“They will give you the shirt off their back,” he said. “And then they will tell you how to wear it.”

Except for a short stint in the San Gabriel Valley, Walsh has lived in San Pedro all his life, and has become something of a local celebrity for having coached the Pirates to consecutive City finals.

“I remember when I lived in the San Gabriel Valley, all I did was call schools in San Pedro, looking for a job so I could come back,” he said. “The only people that live in San Pedro are people that have lived here since birth, or people that were born here, moved away, and now have moved back.”

Walsh and many others believe that has resulted in the tight community that still considers itself a separate entity, even though it was annexed in 1909 by a harbor-hungry Los Angeles.

“We have our own newspaper down here [the News-Pilot] and our own cable station, and we are on a peninsula, so I think there is a feeling that we are all alone,” said 1946 graduate Sam Domancich. “We are 25 miles from [downtown] Los Angeles and at the bottom of the ladder. We are sort of unified against the world.”

That is the very idea that San Pedro High football coaches have been selling for years. Most of the students can trace their heritage back to Croatian cannery workers, Mexican farmers and Italian fishermen who were the original San Pedrans (pronounced Pee-drans).

“My players know about the history,” Walsh said. “They see that I am from San Pedro, that the assistant coaches are from San Pedro, and that the people in the stands are their neighbors and family.”

Said Fiege: “San Pedro is unique because they are home-grown. They are what football programs used to be about and what you want them to be.”

Taft compares to San Pedro in that both are 13-0. There, the similarity ends.

San Pedrans cram into Daniels Field on Fridays, some walking only a few blocks to get there. Crowds of 3,000 to 3,500 are common.

Many Taft fans, like the Blacks, must drive long distances, since more than half of the school’s 3,000 students are bused into Woodland Hills, at the western end of the San Fernando Valley, or transferred in under an open-enrollment policy. Taft home games usually draw 500-600 spectators, although last week’s playoff game pulled in 2,000.

“Our people have to come great distances,” Taft Principal Ron Berz said. “Everybody likes to support a winner, but for Friday night football, you need the support from the greater community. We don’t have that here. Some people come to attend the game, but they are not really active in the community. The travel does that.”

The schools themselves are not so different. Taft’s enrollment includes 60% minorities, about the same as San Pedro’s, and they are two of the city’s bigger schools.

But the communities are vastly different. Minorities account for more than 50% of San Pedro’s population, whereas they make up less than 12% of Woodland Hills residents, according to 1996 estimates by Claritas Data Services, a marketing research firm in Ithaca, N.Y. Also, just under 50% of those living near Taft earn more than $50,000 a year, compared to 23% in San Pedro. And the median income for the two areas for 1996 is an estimated $56,842 in Woodland Hills to $31,655 in San Pedro.

According to a 1990 survey of those over 18, in the areas surrounding the schools, 16% in San Pedro have high school diplomas, compared to 30% in Woodland Hills.

“San Pedrans, through history, have been working people,” Domancich said. “I don’t know much about Woodland Hills, but the people here have been here a long time.”

Taft High was opened in 1960, and is short of tradition, alumni and fans with a sense of obligation to support the school and its athletic teams.

“Not hard to build support for a winning [football] program,” San Pedro Principal Stephen Walters said. “But I could see how [at Taft] it could be difficult, and how it would be difficult to build community support for booster groups, parent advisory councils. It is much easier if you have a base of community identity.”

The base of San Pedro fans was there in 1992, when Taft and San Pedro played in the City Section 3-A final, won by the Pirates, 24-7.

Also there was Reese, who will be the public address announcer tonight at the Coliseum, ending his 50th season of announcing Pirate games.

He is practically a living symbol of San Pedro football. He turned 80 last week, and of his six living brothers and sisters, five live in San Pedro.

“[My family] moved here from Wyoming in 1921, the first year San Pedro won a league championship,” Reese said. “My family, and all the families, they have been here a long time--some 100 years. Because of that there is a loyalty to this town and to the [football] team unlike any place else.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

City Champions

Listed are winners of major-division championship games. A City League was created in 1912. From 1912-33, the winner of the City League was considered the City champion. First playoffs were held in 1934. In 1939-47, 1951 and 1956, no playoffs were held.

1912: Los Angeles

1913: Manual Arts

1914: Manual Arts

1915: Poly

1916: Manual Arts

1917: Manual Arts

1918: No champion, flu epidemic

1919: Manual Arts

1920: Poly

1921: Manual Arts

1922: Franklin

1923: Los Angeles

1924: Los Angeles and Poly

1925: Los Angeles

1926: Poly

1927: Hollywood

1928: Poly

1929: Los Angeles

1930: Fremont, Lincoln and Manual Arts

1931: Fremont

1932: Los Angeles

1933: Los Angeles

1934: Manual Arts 20, Hollywood 0

1935: Lincoln 13, Fremont 9

1936: Manual Arts 12, Los Angeles 0

1937: Manual Arts 34, Marshall 7

1938: Los Angeles 6, Roosevelt 6

1939-47: No playoffs held

1948: Fremont 17, Gardena 6

1949: Fremont 59, Hollywood 0

1950: Fremont 20, Canoga Park 6

1951: No playoffs held

1952: Manual Arts 26, Los Angeles 14

1953: San Fernando 20, Poly 18

1954: Manual Arts 21, Los Angeles 0

1955: South Gate 7, North Hollywood 0

1956: No playoffs held

1957: Manual Arts 23, Banning 13

1958: Banning 59, Fremont 19

1959: Huntington Park 46, Reseda 6

1960: Banning 57, Los Angeles 26

1961: Manual Arts 21, Birmingham 0

1962: Manual Arts 35, Banning 7

1963: Birmingham 19, Los Angeles 14

1964: Gardena 12, Los Angeles 12

1965: Los Angeles 27, Westchester 7

1966: Carson 27, San Fernando 13

1967: San Fernando 27, Westchester 14

1968: Canoga Park 34, Poly 27

1969: Gardena 37, Roosevelt 20

1970: Granada Hills 38, San Fernando 28

1971: Carson 41, Monroe 20

1972: Carson 29, Bell 15

1973: Gardena 28, Carson 0

1974: San Fernando 12, Palisades 10

1975: San Fernando 20, Banning 8

1976: Banning 34, Cleveland 0

1977: Banning 14, El Camino Real 7

1978: Banning 7, Carson 6

1979: Banning 14, Carson 13

1980: Banning 34, El Camino Real 12

1981: Banning 21, Carson 14

1982: Carson 34, Crenshaw 27

1983: Banning 30, Carson 29

1984: Carson 33, Banning 20

1985: Banning 31, Carson 7

1986: Carson 21, Banning 11

1987: Granada Hills 27, Carson 14

1988: Carson 55, Banning 7

1989: Dorsey 26, Carson 17

1990: Carson 37, Banning 16

1991: Dorsey 33, Banning 30

1992: Sylmar 17, Carson 0

1993: Carson 26, Dorsey 0

1994: Sylmar 38, Crenshaw 6

1995: Dorsey 10, San Pedro 8

TONIGHT’S CITY SECTION FOOTBALL FINALS

AT COLISEUM

DIVISION 4-A: San Pedro (13-0) vs. Taft (13-0), 8 p.m.

DIVISION 3-A: Wilson (9-4) vs. Van Nuys (9-4), 5 p.m.

SOUTHERN SECTION: C9