David and Goliath

Roger Takahashi knew some people around the county didn’t have the highest regard for the Garden Grove League. But he didn’t realize how bad the situation was until he applied for a job outside the league.

Takahashi had taken La Quinta to the Southern Section Division VI championship game in December 1989, but that accomplishment didn’t hold much weight with those interviewing him for the El Toro head coaching position in the spring of 1990.

“I don’t remember the specific question, but the gist of it was, how could someone from the Garden Grove League make the jump up to that level,” Takahashi said. “The hypocrisy of it was that their previous head coach, Bob Johnson, had been a head coach at Los Amigos, a Garden Grove League school.

“I thought to myself, ‘Is football that different in the Garden Grove League?’ If anything, it takes more talent to coach in the Garden Grove League because there are fewer athletes at your school. You have to be more innovative to cover those spots. That was a very enlightening experience for me.”

It’s an experience that doesn’t surprise coaches and administrators in the Garden Grove League, who have long believed that their league hasn’t been given proper respect. Many Garden Grove League veterans believe the lack of respect begins with football, the most visible sport, and extends to others. Whether their claim is legitimate or only perceived, it is nonetheless a burden carried by many in the Garden Grove League.

Santiago senior Joe Gonzalez, a three-year starter at offensive tackle, said he wonders what his school has to change its image.

“The worst part of it is when we play a nonleague game,” he said. “When you walk on to the field and you say, ‘You know these guys don’t respect us. That they’re going to kick our butts.’ And after we walk off the field with a victory, it seems like people are saying, ‘Well that team wasn’t that good if Santiago beat them.’ All we can do is go play our best and hope somebody notices.”

Pacifica football Coach Bill Craven said he hasn’t noticed that the league isn’t being respected, but he does think part of the league’s image problem relates to its lack of parity.

“It’s become a top-heavy and bottom-heavy league,” said Craven, who has been head coach at Pacifica for 23 years. “I think all other leagues are pretty balanced where your bottom teams play better against your top teams. In our league, that hasn’t always been the situation.”

For the last five years, Pacifica, Los Amigos and Rancho Alamitos have dominated the Garden Grove League. The bottom dwellers have been La Quinta, Santiago, Bolsa Grande and Garden Grove.

“Before that, it was almost reversed,” Craven said. “We just have never had a cycle where all the teams were competitive.”

But this season comes close. Only Garden Grove and Bolsa Grande have losing records. The other five teams all have a shot at the playoffs.

Jim Perry, longtime athletic director at La Quinta and an ardent defender of the GGL, said the league’s image problem has bothered him for some time.

“I’m baffled by the lack of respect we get, especially considering the number of good athletes we’ve produced,” Perry said. “I’m told some people think we’re in our own little world because we have seven teams [all members of the Garden Grove Unified School District]. There’s only one other league like ours--the Freeway League [composed of teams/schools from the Fullerton Joint Union High School District]--but you don’t hear people speak of that league in the terms they use for this one. We just have to show people that we can play.”

Every year, Garden Grove League teams seem to do a pretty good job of that. Already this season, Pacifica, a Division IX team, has beaten second-ranked Bell Gardens and Rancho Alamitos has defeated Lakewood Mayfair, ranked seventh in Division IX.

Championship Drought

The Garden Grove League hasn’t won a section football championship since Bolsa Grande took the Central Conference in 1986, but it has had three runners-up in the last six years--Pacifica in 1996, and Rancho Alamitos in 1992 and ’93. The league also has had its share of impressive playoff runs, most notably Pacifica’s in 1996. The Mariners finished fourth in league, entered the playoffs as a wild-card team, then upset third-seeded Laguna Hills in the first round and advanced to the Division VIII title game, losing to top-seeded Aliso Niguel, which finished the season undefeated.

Last year, Rancho Alamitos, then a Division VIII team--pulled off one of the Garden Grove League’s biggest regular-season victories. It routed Esperanza, a Division I power, 38-14, on Esperanza’s home field.

“There are teams in every league that can play with anybody in the county, and Rancho Alamitos proved that,” Esperanza Coach Gary Meek said. “They came out and kicked our tail. That was one of the biggest thumpings I’ve taken in my tenure here. They had some of the best athletes we faced all year. David Vickers [a redshirt at Colorado State] was the best all-around athlete we faced all year.”

Esperanza quarterback Grant Wagner had a rough game last year against Rancho Alamitos, but he got his revenge this year by throwing four touchdown passes in the Aztecs’ 44-6 victory over the Vaqueros, who graduated most of their top players last year.

“They were pretty stacked last year,” Wagner said. “They knew it and we knew it. We probably just didn’t know it enough.”

Rancho Alamitos quarterback George Gonzalez, one of the few holdovers from last year’s team, said he tries to ignore what people say about his league. But he admitted last year’s blowout victory over Esperanza had to help the league’s image.

“We go out and represent the Garden Grove League and we show that we’re just as good as some other leagues,” Gonzalez said. “We’re a small school, but we still hold our own. You work with what you’ve got.”

And most Garden Grove League coaches don’t have much to work with. Rancho Alamitos has 32 players on its roster and only 18 of them play. Los Amigos has 31 players, two of them Samoan immigrants who had never played contact football until this year but are playing significant roles this season for Takahashi, now in his fifth year as the Lobos’ head coach.

“You’re on edge every game because you know one or two major injuries can ruin your year,” Takahashi said.

The changing demographics in the Garden Grove Unified School District, the county’s second largest district and the state’s 11th largest with 47,000 students, has created the biggest melting pot of any league in the county. In 1977, 79% of the league’s students were white, 14.5% were Latino and 3.2% Asian. In 1997, 44.1% were Latino, 28.7% Asian and 23.4% were white. Today, half the students in the district are classified as limited English or non-English speaking.

Coaches say those demographics have meant a cut in the number of students playing football.

“We’re just developing a generation that is familiar with the sport of football,” Rancho Alamitos Coach Doug Case said. “Those kids that were 4 years old when they came over are now mostly Americanized. So things might change in this league in the next 10 years.”

Said Alan Trudell, a spokesman for the district: “I’ve always thought the key in our district was to involve kids in sports. Because of the demographics of our district, coaches have to go beyond the norm to engage kids in organized sports programs.”

Case said he has been able to get kids out for football, but he’s having a hard time keeping them in his program. Case had only 20% percent of his freshman class in 1997 return this season for various reasons, including grade problems and disinterest. Rancho Alamitos has reached the playoffs the last eight years, but the Vaqueros are in danger of missing the playoffs this season.

“All the bigger programs have what’s called position competition,” Case said. “This year, we have zero position competition. So my first team doesn’t get a real good look in practice at what their opponents might be like.”

But even this year’s Rancho Alamitos team will probably send two players on to the next level--Gonzalez and linebacker Anthony Huizar are being recruited by Western Athletic Conference schools. That would give Rancho Alamitos a total of 12 four-year university players over the last five years.

“I don’t know how many big schools can make that claim,” Case said.

Top-Ranked Players

A claim the Garden Grove League can make this week is the fact that it has the county’s top three rushers--Andrew Niumata of Los Amigos, James Thomas of Santiago and Hai Duyen Nguyen of La Quinta.

“Some will say we don’t play anybody, but I disagree,” La Quinta’s Perry said. “We play a number of good teams outside the league. I know of kids who tell other kids we’re not a good league, that they won’t get exposure here. I’ve coached at every level, including Division I, and let me tell you, exposure is overrated. You look at college rosters, and you’ll find kids who come from big schools and schools with only 30-40 students. If you can play, you can play.”

Niumata, who leads the county in rushing with 1,716 yards, said he’s often kidded about playing in the Garden Grove League: “They say, ‘What are you, you’re doing good in Division IX and your league, why don’t you come up to Division I and we’ll see how you do.’ ”

Thomas said he hears the same things: “People say it’s the league. They say, ‘Look at the teams in your league.’ But it’s really not about any of that. I believe it comes down to hard work and dedication. And we’ve proven to be pretty good in those areas.”

Not everyone needs to be sold on Garden Grove League players. Aliso Niguel Coach Joe Wood had so much respect for them that he made a point of scheduling them in the beginning stages of his program.

“I wanted my kids to see how this game is really played,” Wood said. “The Garden Grove League has some of the toughest, most physical kids around, and I wanted my kids to experience that. It was a challenge for a new program to step in against character teams like that. They’re not the biggest kids, but they play with a lot of heart. I have the utmost resect for the players and coaches in that league.”