20 Students Remained Friends Till the End

You could say the Superior Street kids at Chatsworth High School have been living a 13-year episode of “Friends.”

But with 20 of the 40 students from Superior Street School’s kindergarten class of 1987 graduating together Thursday after spending their entire school careers together, it’s more like “Friends” meets “Saved by the Bell” and “The Real World.”

All the elements are there--the hot jock, the popular cheerleader, the outcast-cum-cool insider and the isolated, enlightened one who parts from the group after a philosophical revelation.

Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Hilda Ramirez said it is “very rare if at all” that such a large group remains together and remains friends from kindergarten to graduation.

Staying together meant forces beyond the students’ control had to keep 19 families in the neighborhood (two of the girls are twins) and school district boundaries intact. Early on, staying friends depended on sports.

“It was all about AA and AAA baseball, then the first year of fast pitch back in elementary,” Billy Haas said. “In ninth and 10th grade, it was street hockey behind the Pic ‘N’ Save.”

Over the same span of time, most of the 12 boys were in Boy Scouts, going through the pick-on-the-girls-we’ll-later-like phase while a number of the eight girls were in Girl Scouts. Matt Fisher and Tiffany Webb broke ranks when they became the group’s first and only romantic couple.

*

Matt, an All-City baseball player, is the only Superior boy who stuck with the sport long enough to win a national Little League championship with Northridge’s “earthquake kids” in 1994. And Tiffany, to hear Haas tell it, “has always been the girl to know. If you knew her, you were one of the cool guys.”

The rest of the group has kept its relations strictly platonic.

“We’re all kind of like brothers and sisters,” Kim Underell said. “It would be weird if [anything romantic] ever happened.”

In addition to Tiffany and Matt’s love affair, the crew has evolved in other ways. They are all now 18 years old except for Hasen Ahmed, who is 17.

Little Mike Mathias is now taller than Big Mike Press. Billy once was the chunky kid. Now he’s 6 foot 3 and slim, almost lanky. Billy and Big Mike, once the target of bullies, are now varsity athletes. Big Daniel Wheat is still big, but he is just Big Dan Wheat now.

At 4 years old, Mike Press and Evan Robins cried together when Littlefoot’s mother died in “The Land Before Time.”

On Monday, Evan said he was ready to shed tears again if the Lakers lost in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

The group has developed cliques within the clique. Hasen stands apart from all of them.

“I split off and went my own way in middle school when they all got into sports and stuff,” said Hasen, who also said he concentrates on Kung Fu training and robotics. “Within myself, I am a lot more mature and see life in a different way, more spiritual. I don’t see anything from a material standpoint. I sort of care about my friends, but whatever happens [with them] doesn’t really matter.”

The friendships and the friends have made their marks on Chatsworth High. Billy and Evan were voted Best Friends by their senior classmates. The two Mikes were runners-up. The class recognized Matt as its Party Animal.

*

The longtime friends represent some of the best and brightest of Chatsworth’s 605 graduating seniors. Several are honor students. The group can claim two soccer players, three football players, a volleyball player and a two-time All-City baseball player, a cheerleader, the president of the Robotics Club, a swing dance standout, and a thespian who carries the legacy of Chatsworth’s drama department left by alumni Kevin Spacey and Val Kilmer.

The group also includes Steve Thomas, Kelly Underell, Kim Krivitski, Jennifer Goodman, David Wood, Jose Rodriguez, Kyla Hegeman, Lucius Duper, Amanda Hackney, Justin Hanchett and Jason Gilsason.

Office manager Debby Rizzotti started her career at Superior Street Elementary when the crew was there and now works at Chatsworth High’s school improvement office.

“They are still the same nice kids,’ said Rizzotti, who attended the prom this year to see their last high school formal. “I know it sounds mushy, but it’s true. Every time one comes to me to sign their yearbook, I have tears in my eyes.”

Evan, the actor, foreshadowed his penchant for public performance as a first-grader at Superior. He delivered an address on ABC network television when a group of San Fernando Valley schools buried a time capsule to be opened in 2000 before the class graduated. The school and the district said they cannot find the capsule.

The group won’t have to rely on buried memories, though. The circle of friends continues after graduation. Most of the Superior Street 20 plan to attend colleges in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, with clusters of them going to school together.