Making Waves

Surprisingly, Don Morrow held onto the phone when he heard the news, his composure intact.

Anyone else in his place might have spiked the phone in jubilation, but the Mira Costa High football coach continued on as if he were simply chatting about the weather.

The news: The team that had ruined Morrow’s championship hopes the past two seasons, Newhall Hart High, had been bumped to a higher playoff division. Mira Costa was now heir apparent to the Southern Section Division III title.

But Morrow wasn’t exuberant. Looking back, he says he actually was miffed.

“We wanted to play them,” Morrow said this week. “We think we have a team that could compete with them this year.”

His primary concern now is keeping Mira Costa at the top of the Division III rankings, a not-always-simple task at the scenic Manhattan Beach school.

Hemingway couldn’t have found a better place for football than Mira Costa, where ocean breezes blow wisps of fog through the field and seagulls pluck at the moist grass on any given fall afternoon.

Across the street from the practice field is a church. Down the road is a flower shop. The Pacific is less than a mile away, as the seagull flies.

During two-a-day practices, as football players around the Southland melted in sweltering triple-digit August temperatures, Mira Costa’s players worked out in mostly breezy conditions.

“Some of them started to complain,” assistant coach Bill Lysle said. “We said, ‘What’s there to cry about? It’s 74 degrees out here.’ ”

The setting is perfect for surfing. Or beach volleyball. Not necessarily football.

No surprise--before Morrow’s arrival in 1993, Mira Costa had never advanced past the second round of the playoffs.

While the boys’ and girls’ volleyball teams have made Southern Section championships an annual affair, the success of the football team is a relatively new phenomenon at a 51-year-old school where only five football players in the last 25 years have gone directly to playing at a Division I college.

“When we step off a bus for a game, 11 out of 13 times people probably point to us and say, ‘They’re the ones that are going to lose,’ ” Lysle said.

Mira Costa volleyball teams, meanwhile, sent players to USC, UCLA and Stanford ... in the last year.

The football team is well aware of the school’s beachy-keen reputation, in particular the notion that more students would rather wear wetsuits than a dozen pounds of football gear.

“People say, you’re a beach city,” quarterback Peter Dobush said. “Kids play volleyball there. I tell them beach kids can play football, too.”

Wilmington Banning, which has won 11 City Section titles, can attest to that. Mira Costa downed Banning in a physical nonleague game Friday, 28-22, at Gardena High.

Michael Okwo rushed for 110 yards and a touchdown in 20 carries and Mira Costa (3-0) held the Pilots (2-1) to 64 yards in the second half.

A 6-foot, 210-pound linebacker and running back, Okwo certainly isn’t beach sand-soft. A tough, slashing runner, and a heavy hitter on defense, he has scholarship offers from Stanford, UCLA, USC and Oregon State.

Like others around the Mira Costa campus, Okwo credits Morrow for turning the program around.

Morrow rules by democracy and scores points with his players by doing such things as allowing them to design their own gadget plays. One last year--a tailback pass play--was named after a fast-food restaurant. When the call came into the huddle during a game, the players broke into a smile.

“It’s not a dictatorship here,” Okwo said. “Sometimes you don’t have the 6-5 guys, the 4.4 40 [-yard dash] guys. Our coach knows we don’t have that, but he works with what he has.”

At a practice this week, Morrow, 43, looked as if he could still be a high school student, wearing khaki shorts, a Hawaiian floral shirt, sandals and wraparound shades as he walked in and out of the huddle with a strawberry sucker in one hand, daily practice plan in the other.

A former Cal State Northridge quarterback, Morrow knows the game. He graduated in 1977 from Aviation High, the now-defunct school in Redondo that closed in 1982 because of dwindling enrollment.

He played two years at El Camino junior college and then went to Northridge, where his highlight was a 20-17 victory against UC Davis and future NFL quarterback Ken O’Brien in 1981.

Morrow’s coaching skills took off shortly after he was hired away from South Torrance. Mira Costa won the Division VII title in 1993, Morrow’s first season, and won the Division IX championship in 1997.

A year later, however, the Mustangs were moved up to Division II. They lost to Diamond Bar in the first round that season and failed to make the playoffs in 1999.

That’s when the whispers started. Maybe they’re in over their heads. Maybe those championship victories over Garden Grove Rancho Alamitos and Monrovia came against inferior competition.

Mira Costa, after moving into Division III in 2000, stormed into the final with a 12-1 record and faced Hart for the first time. Mira Costa lost, 34-11, but as they like to say in Manhattan Beach, the Mustangs trailed at halftime only 17-11.

Last year, the Mustangs were 12-0 before they again played Hart, this time in a semifinal. Final score: 35-6. As they like to say in the South Bay, the game was tied, 0-0, after the first quarter.

There’s a good reason Morrow and his players aren’t thrilled whenever Hart is mentioned.

“They whooped on us the past couple years,” Morrow said with a wry smile. “There’s a running joke that if there’s a kid on our campus wearing red and black, we’re going to go after him. I tell my own sons, ‘What are you doing with those black shorts and red shirt? Want your old man to beat you up?’ ”

With Okwo, Dobush and bruising fullback-linebacker Kasey Sitchler, it appears the Mustangs could finally win that elusive Division III title, 12 seasons after the football program nearly fell into complete disarray.

Lysle, not Morrow, initially took on the task of keeping the program together. He was hired as head coach in 1991 and took the job for one reason.

“Because they couldn’t give it away,” Lysle said. “It was terrible. I went in and said I’d only commit one year and I’d try not to let the team get embarrassed.”

Lysle ended up staying two years. The team won seven games. Morrow was hired away from South Torrance. Lysle left quietly.

A few years later, Morrow had a couple spots to fill on his staff. He called Lysle in 1996 and asked him to come back to Mira Costa.

Lysle returned, and now coaches the linebackers.

The gang’s all here. So is the talent. No surfboards can be seen in this locker room.

As they like to say around here, this could be Mira Costa’s year.

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Mustang Magic

Since Don Morrow became head coach, Mira Costa has made the playoffs eight of nine seasons and won two Southern Section titles. A look at those seasons:

*--* Year Div Rec Playoffs 2001 III 12-1 l. to Hart, 35-6, in semifinals 2000 III 12-2 l. to Hart, 34-11, in finals 1999 II 5-4-1 did not make playoffs 1998 II 6-5 l. to Diamond Bar, 36-20, in first round 1997 IX 12-2 d. Monrovia, 28-14, in final 1996 IX 10-4 l. to Atascadero, 20-9, in final 1995 VII 8-4 l. to Covina, 33-7, in second round 1994 VII 12-2 l. to Arroyo Grande, 16-0, in final 1993 VII 13-1 d. Rancho Alamitos, 29-17, in final

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