Worst Season for County Football Teams Comes to End

The nose dive Orange County’s five football teams took this season will end today.

Fullerton, Golden West, Orange Coast, Saddleback and Santa Ana have fielded teams since 1968 and never won fewer than 21 games (1994).

But this season, the teams are 10-35 going into today’s Mission Conference games: El Camino (6-3, 1-3) at Orange Coast (3-6, 0-4) and Palomar (8-1, 4-0) vs. Fullerton (3-6, 2-2) at Cal State Fullerton, both at 1 p.m., and Saddleback (1-8, 1-3) vs. Golden West (0-9, 0-4) at OCC and Santa Ana (3-6) at Riverside (3-6), both at 7 p.m.

Such struggles are part of a recent trend in which county teams have combined for a sub .500 mark for the last three years and five of the last six.

An exception was Saddleback’s 1996 team, which finished 11-0 and won a national title.

The previous worst season was 1994 when county teams went 21-26-5.

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Orange Coast, despite having only one sophomore, has a strong chance of winning a second consecutive women’s state cross-country title. The 3.1-mile championship race starts at 10 a.m. today at Fresno’s Woodward Park.

Coach John Goldman’s OCC team is led by freshman Zoila Gomez, who won the Southern California title two weeks ago at Mt. San Antonio. OCC had 44 points and El Camino was second at 110. Santa Ana (202) was third.

OCC’s Bernice Carbajal was seventh at the Southern California race with Penni Proffitt, the only sophomore, ninth. Sinfo Orozco was 11th, Beatriz Cordoba 16th and Elsa Ortega 19th.

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The Cypress women’s soccer team plays Palomar at 7 tonight at Cal State Fullerton with a berth in the state tournament on the line.

Cypress is 21-0-1 and seeded second in Southern California. Palomar (15-3-2) is seeded fifth.

Cypress is coming off a second-round victory over Long Beach in which the Chargers won on penalty kicks.