Eventful Times

High school sports serve as a rite of passage for the athletes who play them, the student, friends and families that gather to watch them and the sportswriters who cut their professional teeth covering them.

High school football games in Los Angeles date to 1896, but it wasn’t until 1934 that the Los Angeles City Section was born.

The Southern Section was established in 1912 and held its first athletic competition in 1913.

This story is not an attempt to document the achievements of every outstanding athlete, coach and team that made a mark, for there are far too many to chronicle here.

Rather, it is a history lesson of sorts told by current and former Times staff writers who have written about Southland prep athletes. Most of the writers graduated from Los Angeles-area high schools. And while many have gone on to cover college and professional sports as beat writers or columnists, all maintain indelible images of the prep athletes they watched, covered and, in some instances, competed with and against on the playing field.

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Years ago a Times sportswriter was assigned to cover a big boxing match at Los Angeles’ old Wrigley Field. A massive riot broke out at the ballpark and the fight was canceled.

The Times’ sports desk waited and waited, finally phoned the reporter’s house, got him, said where the hell’s your story?

“The fight was canceled,” he said. “There is no story.”

I’m not that dumb. I know a good sports story when it doesn’t happen. I covered two for The Times.

One, it was a Friday night in 1977, I was prep editor, riding the phones taking football scores. The coach of Los Angeles Wilson, Vic Cuccia, phoned in his score. Wilson and Cuccia were famed for running up horrendous scores.

“We beat Lincoln, 63-0,” Cuccia said, and gave me the score by quarters.

“Great,” I said. “No scoring in the second half?”

“We didn’t play the second half. Lincoln left at halftime.”

My little story made the front page of sports and touched off a weeks-long debate over which is the villain: The pourer-on-er, or the team that can’t take a beating with grace. Gee that was fun.

The experience, however, prepared me for another football game I was scheduled to cover a few years later--Caltech vs. Tijuana Tech at the Rose Bowl. The Caltech team, fans and media (me) waited and waited, but Tijuana Tech never showed. Their bus either broke down, or was turned back at the border when the U.S. Border Guard didn’t buy the story that they were the Tijuana Tech football team heading for the Rose Bowl.

That was another big story for me. I was considered the staff ace at writing about the games people don’t play.