Desert High

The fans come by the thousands, and it’s hard to imagine from where, but many are in their seats an hour or more before game time, eagerly anticipating their team’s traditional grand entrance.

And then it begins, a blue-and-gold stream of 80 players, cleats clattering against concrete as they slowly descend from a locker room upon a distant hillside, to be engulfed by cheers and applause from a community that all but shuts down for their games.

It’s Friday night in Phelan, a wind-swept, tiny, unincorporated town nestled in the shadow of a mountain ski resort, just above the vast expanse that is the Mojave Desert.

Not just any Friday night, mind you, but a Friday night in the fall, which means the Serrano High Diamondbacks are playing football.

Most of the locals are fans of the team, some of whom, with a little prodding, will admit that they go to games even though they aren’t particularly fond of football. It’s a social event.

“The place to be,” says Chris Johnson, a sophomore baseball player.

And that goes whether you’re a county supervisor looking to shake a few hands, a retiree who recalls the day the school’s first brick was laid, someone’s grandparents visiting from Missouri, or the owner of an after-game fast-food hangout.

There are better high school teams playing before larger home crowds around Southern California, but few like the 8-1 Diamondbacks, the pride, the joy--and, some say, the only real entertainment--of this three-town region at the southwestern edge of San Bernardino County.

“Everybody wants to see the kids thrive,” says Rick Weber, whose nephews played for Serrano. “Everybody follows the team.”

And almost everyone goes to the games. Serrano’s enrollment is 2,056--a figure the Diamondbacks have surpassed in attendance at every home game this season.

Winning helps. With one game to go, Serrano has clinched at least a tie for the Mojave River League title for the fourth consecutive season. But even in down years--there were a few in the 1990s--the Diamondbacks often brought out more fans for a road game than the home team.

There are no shopping malls here, and the closest movie theater is in Victorville, about 15 miles away. Drinking and partying, veiled by the darkness in the emptiness of the desert, are popular pastimes for teens.

“If it weren’t for football, there would be a lot more [kids] out there,” says Andrea Morrison, Serrano’s activities director.

The high school is on Sheep Creek Road, the town’s main drag, less than a mile from where it intersects Highway 138, a notoriously dangerous two-lane stretch of blacktop that one roadside billboard proclaims as “The Road to an Attorney’s Early Retirement.”

The town has two stoplights, one grocery store, one drugstore, and three burger joints--all near the intersection of Sheep Creek and Phelan Street, a short jog from the Serrano campus.

At halftime of the Diamondbacks’ game against Hesperia on a recent Friday night, that intersection is eerily quiet. But heading south on Sheep Creek toward the stadium, cars line the street and spill off into makeshift parking lots in the desert brush.

“Friday night football is the focus of this community,” says Janet Molina, who with her husband Dave, the Serrano girls’ soccer coach, owns the local McDonald’s.

That McDonald’s, and the Burger King and at least one pizza shop, closes at 10 p.m. on Friday nights--unless there’s a football game. “Then they stay open later so people have a place to eat afterward,” says Burt Umstead, an assistant principal.

Smart business. An estimated 4,200 fans watched the Hesperia game--and only about 100 or so were sitting on the visitors’ side.

The athletic fields--”The only patch of grass that grows in this community,” a coach says--are used for youth leagues for soccer, baseball and, of course, football.

During the fall, Saturday mornings at the stadium are a swirl of activity as colorfully outfitted youngsters, some overwhelmed by the bulk of their protective pads, take over the premises from dawn until dusk.

The kids, in various age and weight classifications, are members of the Snowline Diamondbacks youth program, seven teams that just happen to share terminology and a playbook with the high school team of the same nickname.

Among the youth program’s coaches are former Serrano players and the fathers of current and past players. So by the time the best athletes are freshmen, the high school system is already deeply embedded--one reason the frosh squad is 7-2 and the junior varsity team is 9-0.

Such a feeder system was not born overnight. Football Coach Ray Maholchic has been at Serrano since 1987--”Before the first street light,” he says--and has been head coach since 1991.

The antithesis of fictional fire-and-brimstone coaches who, in the movies, often command the small-town juggernaut, Maholchic, 45, spends the early afternoon hours of a game day taking a quiet hike with his dog in the hills around his Wrightwood home.

“I’m pretty low key, not a rah-rah guy,” he says. “As a player, I was always one of those fringe guys. Everybody else would be hollering and jumping up and down and I’d be there trying not to get my feet stepped on.”

He is, however, a commanding presence. Maholchic says if one of his players “got in trouble” it is likely that he would be called before the police.

“If we mess up anywhere around here, Coach is going to hear about it,” says Jamiel Vanover, a senior and the team’s star inside linebacker. “It always gets back.”

Around town, Maholchic is an unwilling celebrity, probably because he has been around long enough to know that popularity can be fleeting. It wasn’t so long ago that the team had a couple of losing seasons and his wife, Tracy, was compelled to seek refuge on the opposing team’s side during games.

“They were breaking my windows in the parking lot four or five years ago,” he says, with the trace of a grin.

That said, the coach is comfortable enough to have his family’s phone number listed in the local white pages, and he favorably compares high school football here to the way the game is revered in small Texas towns.

“This is how it should be,” he says.

Almost everyone seems to agree. There are, however, a few holdouts on campus, the self-proclaimed “Jock Destroyers,” who ignited a ruckus by distributing some fliers poking fun at the school’s most popular jocks--football players--at a pep rally a few weeks ago.

Leaders of the “Destroyers” complained to Umstead, the assistant principal, that the football team got special privileges. He found it difficult to argue one example:

The last three years, when the Diamondbacks shared the league football title, team members took a day off school for a free day of snowboarding and skiing offered them by the management of the Mountain High ski area.

“Basically they were saying, ‘Nobody else gets a day off school to board and ski for free,”’ Umstead recalls. “They’re right. [Football players] have missed instructional time.”

Opposing coaches would say Maholchic’s gig is equally sweet, despite the remote outpost. None of his teaching is done in the classroom. He has five weightlifting classes, all conducted in a recently completed state-of-the-art facility. His team also benefits from a booster club that raised about $20,000 this year--about twice as much as the three other sports booster clubs on campus.

The school itself is another attraction--and not only to the local folks. Spend any time around campus and you will surely hear a school official--or two, or three--refer to Serrano as “the Stanford of the High Desert.”

A stretch, yes. But the school does boast an impressive mix of sports and academics. Serrano has the top academic program among public schools in the High Desert, according to the state’s Academic Performance Index, a summary of recent state and national test scores.

That record, plus the variety of college advanced-placement programs the school offers, helps Serrano attract about 20% of its students from outside the district. Of those, 17 come from Lake Los Angeles, a 45-minute drive one way--with no school bus service.

Three years ago, one of the outsiders Serrano welcomed was Clark Flournoy, who, by the time he graduates next summer, might well be the first Diamondback football player to earn a major-college scholarship.

Flournoy, from Adelanto, about 15 minutes away, has been the Diamondbacks’ starting tailback the last three seasons. He doesn’t have sprinter’s speed, but he’s quick to find a seam, has nifty moves, and finishes off runs by punishing tacklers.

And that’s saving some of his best moves for after the game. Getting away from the backslappers and huggers and other well-wishers who like to show their gratitude “can be an hourlong job,” he says.

He loves it, of course.

“You look up in those stands and you know you’re the entertainment for the night,” Flournoy says. “It’s a great feeling. It makes you want to do something special.”

For many of the Diamondback faithful, it doesn’t take much.

For one, booster club President Sherri Cater, just showing up does it.

“When the players come down that ramp and onto the field,” Cater says, choking up, “it just makes me want to cry.”