San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FRIDAY’S LIGHTS BRIGHT ACROSS STATE LINE
While California prep teams sit, games rage on in Arizona, some with fans
Yuma High School opened with four teachers in September 1909, three years before statehood, back when it was still the Arizona Territory. The new school promptly burned down and moved to the abandoned Yuma Territorial State Prison, with classes in the old cellblocks and assemblies in the infirmary.
The city decided it needed its jail back, and the high school started building its current facility on 6th Avenue. About that same time, the football team traveled to Phoenix for a game and the opposing student section, either cognizant of the school’s history or critical of its gridiron tactics, started chanting, “Criminals, criminals.”
It stuck. In 1917, the school board officially adopted it as the mascot.
The Yuma High Criminals. A century later, they still embrace it. The logo scripted across the basketball court proudly says CRIMINALS, with a ball and chain hanging off the ‘S.’ The state champion wrestling team got authentic black- and white-striped jumpsuits as warmups, made by inmates at a state penitentiary in Ohio.
And Friday night, under twinkling stars and stadium lights, the football team ran onto Doan Field for its first home game of the 2020 season as it always does, gathering behind prison “gates” in the north end zone and then charging onto the grass behind a Yuma city police cruiser, lights whirring, sirens blaring.
The balmy evening dripped with symbolism and irony. If they were doing what they were Friday night a few hundred yards away across the state line, they really would be criminals.
California has postponed football and all other fall high school sports until winter, and youth sports scrimmaging and competitions remain verboten. Arizona? Playing everything.
Nowhere is the contrast more striking than in this arid border outpost, tectonic plates of political and public health ideologies separated by what’s left of the Colorado River after the upstream dams and agricultural irrigation, neighboring states that can’t even agree on a time zone (Arizona and Yuma stay an hour ahead when California “falls back” to standard time Nov. 1).
One ahead, the other behind. One open, the other closed. Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Darkness. A month ago, the Arizona Interscholastic Association granted approval to proceed with fall sports using a phased-in approach — first cross country, then girls volleyball
and now football. Many schools had their openers Oct. 2. The Yuma Union High School District opened Friday with two games: Cibola at Yuma, Kofa at Gila Ridge. A couple miles south of Doan Field, Yuma Catholic hosted Pusch Ridge Christian Academy of Tucson before a raucous crowd.
Caught in the political riptide is San Pasqual Valley High, a small school just across the border in the California town of Winterhaven. Despite their address, the Warriors are a member of the AIA instead of the California Interscholastic Federation’s San Diego Section like its brethren in the Imperial Valley. Unable to practice or play games under California regulations, it canceled fall sports; when (or if) California prep football practice starts in December, Arizona’s season will be over.
Its football field in Winterhaven sits barren, no lines painted on it, the grass browning.
“Warrio s stay safe,” the school marquee says, the ‘r’ having fallen off. “We love you!”
North to south, separated by a mere seven miles, the three — San Pasqual Valley, Yuma and Yuma Catholic — represent the range of responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Nothing, something, everything.
“You can just watch them,” Yuma High Principal Mike Fritz said, sweeping his hand across the field while the blue-clad Criminals warmed up in Friday’s twilight. “They’re having fun, and they’re doing it in a safe way. Just the opportunity for kids to participate, to get out there and see some normalcy.”
The four football-playing schools in Yuma Union decided against their usual schedules that regularly take them on bus trips through the desert to Phoenix and beyond, instead arranging a six-week regular season with home and away games against each other. On Sept. 14, they gave parents the option of fully online or hybrid learning models, where half the students come to campus on Monday and Tuesday and the other half on Thursday and Friday. Athletes signed separate waivers allowing them to attend daily sports practice after school.
The original plan was to close all games to spectators. The parents rebelled, circulating a petition demanding they be admitted. They hoped to gather 600 signatures. They got 1,600, and the school board relented with two tickets per athlete.
There are no concessions. Marching bands aren’t permitted, either, only small cheer squads. When Cibola scored Friday night, they danced to the Raiders’ fight song played through a portable speaker. They’ll revisit the policy after two games.
“Friday Night Lights is important and a nice perk, but ultimately it’s not the most important thing in life,” Yuma High Athletic Director Kathy Hoover said. “There’s a bit of anxiety as an administrator that we don’t put our students and others in harm’s way. If we can bring that Friday Night Lights experience and do it safely, we’re excited to do that. We just have to balance the needs of mental and emotional health while understanding at the same time this is a very real physical threat.”
The players jumped around the sideline and slapped helmets like a normal Friday night, but the absence of crowd noise was palpable, eerie even. The silence was finally broken when the Criminals scored and the siren mounted atop the library wailed into the night air, echoing off buildings and drifting across the river into California.
If you couldn’t hear it in Winterhaven, you certainly could see the fireworks.
Those were from Ricky Gwynn Stadium further south at Yuma Catholic, shot off after scores by the home team. Local officials granted a waiver from the state’s 50-person limit on public gatherings to operate the 2,200-seat facility at half-capacity, and it was every bit of that, including a couple hundred Pusch Ridge fans who drove the three hours from Tucson. (Or put it this way: The snack bar had run out of hot dogs by halftime.)
There was a pep band, a modern video board with a live stream of the game from multiple camera angles, a student section stomping on the metal bleachers, little kids throwing a football around on an adjacent field, concessions, a merchandise table.
Close your eyes and feel the drum line in your stomach, smell the grill, hear the firstdown roars, and you were transformed to a small Texas town with light standards thrusting into the inky sky and radiating a translucent glow across the prairie. All that was missing was the water tower.
The Shamrocks — Rocks, for short — aren’t subtle about their football template. They wear navy blue jerseys, gold pants and gold helmets with shiny shamrock stickers. Their cheerleaders wear all green with gold bows and pom-pons. They play the Notre Dame fight song.
They have been offering inperson classes for six weeks for the 451 students, with only one reported positive COVID-19 case. None of the 41 varsity or 37 JV players declined to play this season.
To lobby for students in class and fans in Ricky Gwynn Stadium, head coach Rhett Stallworth didn’t have to walk down the hall to the principal’s office. He is the principal.
“We had a lot of people who didn’t want us to open up,” Stallworth said. “Our board came through for us and supported me and backed me up. We got open. We got kids in-person on campus. We got the football stuff going, and you saw the crowd tonight.
“It’s hard to manage sometimes. I tell you what, it’s very stressful. There are a lot of naysayers in everything you do. But if you want to be a leader, you have to be prepared to get off the fence. I’m not a fence walker. You can ask anybody who knows me. I’m not saying I’m always right, either. I definitely make a decision, and as long as I think it’s for the good of everybody, we’re going to take a stand and we’re going to go forward.”
Why jump off the fence?
“There are a lot of kids who live for these moments and you only get that short, four-year window and they won’t get to do it again,” Stallworth said. “If you look at it, one percent of kids will get to play college ball somewhere. Ninety-nine percent of them are not going to play after this. It’s one of those moments you want to enjoy and cherish, and thank God they’re doing it.”
The Rocks won state titles in 2011, 2014 and 2015 and are expected to contend for another after opening with a 28-20 win a week earlier at Phoenix Christian, which entered the season as the state’s top-ranked team in the 3A division. Pusch Ridge led 7-0 midway through the third quarter Friday on a 101yard interception return before a pair of touchdown passes from Stallworth’s sophomore son, Richard, salvaged a 14-7 victory.
“It’s a great feeling just to be able to play, especially when a lot of people don’t have the chance right now during COVID,” Stallworth said, nodding toward the California border.
“You only can play high school football for so long,” said junior Austin Rush, who had a TD reception and interception in the fourth quarter. “Being out here, you have to be grateful for every second you get to play.”
The players retreated to the locker room, passing under a sign that says: “What we do on this field will echo in eternity.”
Back at Yuma High, which claims NFL stars Ron Jessie and Curley Culp among its alums, the head coaching debut of Bo Seibel was ending in 34-14 defeat to Cibola, which has double the enrollment. There were maybe 200 people inside the stadium, and another 50 watching from 5th Avenue that runs along the south end zone of Doan Field.
There were five seniors from last year’s team, unable to get tickets. There was a Cibola player’s girlfriend and her parents. There were neighbors who live across the street from the school.
Sitting on the sidewalk in a yellow lawn chair and a pink dress, peering through the fence with vertical metal rails, was 75-year-old Connie Decorse. She was born in Mexico and moved to Yuma in the 1950s with her 10 siblings. All but one graduated from Yuma High.
She’s been widowed since 2011 and rarely misses a Criminals football game, home or away, a lifeline to her youth. She usually sits on the 35-yard line, about halfway up. If she forgets there’s a game, the siren wailing from atop the library reminds her; she can hear it from her house.
“I was at Walmart today and heard Yuma High was playing tonight,” Decorse said. “I thought, ‘You know what? I can park on the street and bring my chair.’”
As she spoke, Cibola tailback John Beltran dove into the end zone in front of her for one of his three touchdowns. It didn’t seem to matter to her.
“This is my school, I’m proud of it,” Decorse said. “I just enjoy seeing these guys play. It is cool, just to watch them again.”