Victories par for course

It was 1984 ... the year of the golf ball at Newport Harbor High

where Coach Mike Giddings was leading his Sailors to the Sea View

League football championship.

The Tars would go unbeaten in Sea View League play and share a

co-championship with Saddleback. They would rack up a 9-1-2 overall

record and score 340 points, an average of 28 points per start. Yet

it would be a golf ball that many in the Tars’ camp remembered best.

“We were on our ‘Back 40,’ ” recalled the 71-year-old Giddings,

reflecting on the third of his four years as the Sailors’ football

coach, “and I had a strict rule: There was to be no civilians, no

one, on our practice field.”

Aware of Giddings’ temperment, the girls soccer team would

sometimes tease the coach with minor violations.

“[Linebacker] Andy Stoneman always seemed to have a bloody

forehead and nose and he was in charge of ‘between the lines,’ ”

Giddings said. “They’d run over en masse and stop just five yards

from him,” as he stood just inside the line. The girls, laughing,

would back off at that point, surely to the relief of Stoneman.

But for the most part, the “Back 40” was a nation within itself.

At least, until one afternoon as the Tars tuned up for league rival

Laguna Beach and a golfer with an attitude decided to use the

school’s campus as his personal driving range. He used a 7-iron,

taking his swings from near the school’s pool and toward the hallowed

“Back 40.”

“Stoneman asked, ‘Coach, is he between the lines?,’ ” Giddings

recalled. Well, maybe not, but the ball was clearly guilty of

trespass.

“I sent (assistant) Mike Ashen to tell that clown not to hit balls

on to the football field,” Giddings said. “He went down there and

came back and told me the golfer said, ‘[expletive] you coach.’ ”

An enraged Stoneman led the charge and the entire varsity squad

performed its best-ever wind sprint toward, and over, the golfer.

“He hit the guy with a forearm shivver and the 7-iron goes in one

direction and his hat goes in another,” Giddings said with a big grin

in a recent interview.

The next morning Principal Tom Jacobson, as well as the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District, was being threatened with a

lawsuit and word was “This time, Giddings has gone over the line.”

Giddings talked the duffer out of a lawsuit and into becoming a

mascot on the sideline for the upcoming game.

Smoothing things over with Jacobson and the school district,

neither amused by all this, wasn’t as easy.

A suspension was in the process of being served, but at the last

moment it was reconsidered and Giddings was instead banned from the

sideline for the Laguna Beach game. Instead, he directed things from

the press box.

“I was really surprised at the things I could see from the press

box,” Giddings said. “I had Bucko (Shaw) on the sideline.”

Needless to say, there were no more golf balls found on the “Back

40” the rest of the season.

Ah, yes, the season.

“We switched to a one-back offense with Fritz Howser,” Giddings

said, “and I had a quarterback [junior Shane Foley] who could throw

the ball. Offensively, it was our best team.”

The Sailors, with five three-year standouts (Howser, tight end

Joey James, receiver Ho Truong and linemen Mike Beech and Tom

Kitchens, opened with Dick Hill’s Santa Ana Saints.

Andy Shepherd’s 47-yard punt return and a 21-point second quarter

sunk the Saints, 27-8.

Kevin McClelland’s two touchdown runs sparked a 20-7 win over

Irvine, and in a penalty-plagued nonleague game with Huntington

Beach, the Tars were forced to settle for a 24-24 tie. “It was really

a street fight, not a game,” Giddings said. “It’s not a game fondly

remembered.”

Truong caught nine passes for 122 yards and two TDs.

Foley tossed a couple of touchdown passes against Woodbridge, but

the brightest spot in a 26-14 victory was the play of a senior named

John Spangler, who had three interceptions.

“Spangler must have weighed about 112 pounds when I brought him up

as a sophomore,” Giddings said, “but he was one of the best I’ve ever

coached, a very bright player.”

Bryan Guptil scored a couple of touchdowns in a 26-0 win over

Estancia, setting up the Sailors’ showdown with “Speed-el-back,” also

known as Jerry Witte’s Saddleback Roadrunners.

It was second-and-52 late in the game and the Sailors trailed,

26-23, when Foley barked out, “What do you want, coach?”

Giddings responded with a glare and Foley said, “I guess we better

run the screen?”

It was an awesome game. Foley connected on 21 of 39 passes for 299

yards and two TDS, Truong caught 10 balls for 258 yards, Sterling

Coberly booted field goals of 20, 27, 33 and 36 yards, the last one

with 0:04 left at the Santa Ana Bowl.

Harbor’s last drive of 39 yards began with 4:33 left and required

15 plays before Coberly saved it with his place-kick. Foley’s clutch

8-yard pass to Guptil with 0:08 left helped get Coberly comfortable

from 36 yards out.

Howser scored three touchdowns in the Sailors’ 34-0 win over Costa

Mesa on a night when receivers Jerry Piaskowski and Tod Spooner stood

out. Spooner caught two passes for 80 yards, scoring once from 41

yards out. Spooner, the fastest player in Giddings’ four years, had

4.65 speed.

Billy “The Goose” Wilson, one of Y.A. Tittle’s receivers when a

San Francisco 49er, was a receivers coach for Giddings when he was

the head coach for the Honolulu Hawaiians of the short-lived World

Football League. Wilson always wanted to see Giddings in action on

the prep level.

But when he got to Newport Beach, Giddings, because of the

territorial incident with the golfer on Wednesday’s practice day, was

forced to reply, “I’ve been banned to the press box.”

It was the Laguna Beach game and Giddings gave Wilson the honor of

calling about half the plays from the press box, a 35-6 victory which

featured three touchdown passes to Truong.

“Wilson had a ball,” Giddings said.

The University game followed and Howser got it going with a

93-yard kickoff return to up the count to 10-0 in the third quarter.

He then scored the clincher with a 29-yard TD run in a 17-3 victory.

“Howser, you know, couldn’t catch a cold,” Giddings said. “But his

bobbles led to some great kickoff returns.”

Beech, Kitchens and Scott Craig formed a wicked wedge for the

Sailors’ return team.

Corona del Mar (4-2) was the last hurdle in league play and as

gametime approached an uninformed reporter with the Orange County

edition of the Times sauntered up to Giddings in front of the goal

line during pregame warmups where I was chatting with the coach and

asked him, “Uh, coach, what’s your record?”

Giddings, a little dumbfounded at first, but rapidly steaming

toward a boil, tersely responded, “We’ve tied once,” of his 5-0-1

Tars.

It was an amusing scenario. The writer wandered off before

Giddings could really warm up to the occasion.

Newport led, 28-0, at halftime and the Tars eased to a 34-8 win.

Foley was 14 of 21 for 192 yards, twice hooking up with Truong for

scores. Howser had a 72-yard dash as Newport tuned up for the CIF

playoffs.

Bellflower fans watched Foley throw the ball 14 times in the CIF

opener, and 14 completions netted 170 yards and two scores.

Sunny Hills was next and Giddings is still haunted by the 28-22

loss at Buena Park High.

“We probably should have thrown every down,” he said, after seeing

a 19-6 halftime lead evaporate. “I personally lost that game.

They ran away from our ‘field defense,’ and I just never made the

adjustment. All I had to do was stunt.”

Foley netted 239 yards on a 16-for-23 effort, but Howser was

limited to just 55 yards on 17 carries.

For the Sailors -- among them Jason Nedelman, Chris Parks, Mark

Craig, Nelson Anderson, Mark Kelso, Joe Johnson and Pete Howser -- it

was a season cut too short. And Giddings blames himself for failure

to get past the second round for the third straight year.

Beech, Howser and Truong would be recognized in the the All-CIF

Central Conference selections.

* ROGER CARLSON is the former sports editor for the Daily Pilot.

He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].