Only One Thing Keeps This Coach Off the Field--Hiccups

For 23 years, Bill Pendleton has coached football. In that span, he has missed only two games. . . . for hiccups.

Pendleton, Esperanza’s defensive coordinator, missed Thursday’s 41-34 loss to Edison because he was bedridden.

He also missed two practices, which are half of the practices he has missed in his coaching career.

“It’s not like a broken arm or strep throat where there’s a way to fix it,” said Pendleton, 46. “When you have hiccups, it sounds so stupid. When you get only one or two hours of sleep at night, after four or five days it just wears on you and you’re not functioning very well.”

Pendleton had the hiccups for 11 days. A short time after he awoke on Sunday, he realized they were gone. He said treatment is basically slowing down, and he spent about a week in bed.

The malady struck Pendleton in 1981 for 10 days. At that time, he also missed a game and a couple practices.

Both times, he lost 20 pounds. “It was probably a good thing this time,” he joked of his weight loss.

And, of course, he tried everything. “You name it,” Pendleton said. “Magnets, prayer, sugar, holding your nose, drinking water. . . . I could stop it temporarily for five or 10 minutes, but then they would start again. Whatever’s causing it at the root has to go away.

“There are ways to treat it, but nothing to cure it.”

Travis Pendleton, defensive tackle for Esperanza and Bill’s son, played against Edison but not without a distraction: He had a tough time seeing clearly.

Travis, who has received an appointment to West Point, had his eyes examined for the academy earlier Thursday.

“They put some eye drops in and he had blurry vision for the whole game,” Bill Pendleton said.

But at halftime, Travis was starry-eyed--he was named homecoming king. He also had a sack and recovered a fumble.

RECEIVING RECORDS FALL

Charleston Nitro (W.Va.) High School wide receiver Jeff Clark set two national prep records Friday night with 29 catches for 413 yards in a 37-8 victory over Roane County.

Clark broke the record of 26 catches set by Fullerton’s David Sepulveda in a game against Buena Park in 1984, and the record of 403 yards receiving set by John Portugal of Oceanside in 1991, according to the National High School Sports Record Book published by the National Federation of State High School Assns.

YOU’RE IN OR YOU’RE OUT

The decision by Rick Curtis, Northwood’s athletic director and football coach, to play a freelance varsity footbal schedule next year didn’t sit well with some other Pacific Coast League coaches.

The PCL is a five-team football league this season, and Curtis’ decision for Northwood, which is a designated member of the PCL, creates a scramble for University, Estancia and Costa Mesa to fill the holes in their schedules.

“That screws everybody up,” Estancia Coach Dave Perkins said. “Everyone else had to go through it [taking their lumps]. Why are they different?”

Costa Mesa Coach Jerry Howell was even more upset.

“Costa Mesa would like another team in the league,” he said, meaning a viable sixth team. “If they’re going to freelance next year and come back the [following] year when they’re a powerhouse, that’s not fair to our kids.”

Northwood has only freshmen and sophomores this year and is not fielding a varsity football team. It will add juniors to its enrollment next year and play a freelance varsity football schedule in the hopes of playing schools more similar in size.