Mike Angelovic : Edison Quarterback Follows His Former Neighbor From Street Lights to Spotlight in the Title Game

Scott Strosnider used to play football with the kids in the neighborhood. Squires Circle in Huntington Beach was converted into an imaginary Coliseum, where light poles and station wagon bumpers served as yard markers.

The kids in the neighborhood looked up to Scott Strosnider. He played real football at Edison High School. He was the starting center on the Chargers’ Big Five Conference championship teams in 1979 and 1980. He played in real stadiums.

Mike Angelovic lived next door to Strosnider then. Mike, 11, and his little brother, Greg, would coerce Strosnider into taking off his Edison varsity jacket and throwing a few passes to them.

“He could throw a football with either hand,” Angelovic recalled. “When my brother went out for a pass, he’d throw it with his right hand. When I went out, he’d throw it left-handed. We used to call him Stau-bler . . . part Staubach and part Stabler.”

Strosnider was on the other end of the center snap when he played for real. In 1979, he snapped the ball to Frank Seurer , who threw for a school-record 2,063 yards that season.

That record was broken this year. Mike Angelovic grew up to be the quarterback who broke it.

Tonight, Angelovic will be at quarterback when the Chargers face Long Beach Poly for the Big Five title they last won in 1980, with Strosnider at center. Strosnider--now the Edison offensive line coach--will be there, just as he was back on Squires Circle.

“It is sort of a kick,” Strosnider said. “I used to baby-sit him. That basically meant I would go over there and watch TV while he and his brother were asleep.”

Said Angelovic: “I’ve always been pretty good friends with him. We used to play ball out in the street, and I would talk to him about (playing at Edison). He just made it sound great.”

Angelovic got to find out for himself, and, in his senior year, has developed into one of Orange County’s most accurate and productive passers. He has completed 144 of 233 passes (nearly 62%) for 2,216 yards and 21 touchdowns. He has thrown six interceptions, which works out to roughly one interception every 39 passes. He may be the biggest reason the Chargers tied Marina for the Sunset League championship and are playing for the Big Five title.

Edison will be facing a Long Beach Poly defense that has a habit of making opposing offenses look silly. The Jackrabbits won their first eight games, and the defense didn’t allow a touchdown. Angelovic hasn’t heard this much about a defense since the Chargers were preparing to play Servite in the second round of the playoffs.

A few days before that game, Servite Coach Leo Hand said Servite’s pass rush was unlike anything Angelovic had dealt with. Angelovic’s a good quarterback, Hand admitted, but wait untill he sees this defense.

The statistics show Angelovic wasn’t exactly shaking in his cleats. The Friars kept the score down, losing 14-13. But Angelovic completed 20 of 28 passes for 249 yards and 1 touchdown. It was, statistically at least, his best performance of the season.

And there were many good performances. At the end of the regular season, Angelovic was Orange County’s top-rated passer. Ahead of Capistrano Valley’s Scott Stark. Ahead of Newport Harbor’s Shane Foley. But in the Times’ All-County team released Wednesday, Angelovic’s name was nowhere to be found. Stark was the first-team quarterback, Foley the second.

Said Angelovic: “Yeah, I feel like I’ve been a little overlooked. But Stark and Foley deserve it. If I had been picking it, I would have given it to them, too. I was hoping to make it, but looking at it realistically, I figured I’d be about third or fourth.”

For Angelovic, it is an unfortunate twist of fate that he happened to play quarterback in the same county as Stark and Foley. Stark set a county record by passing for 3,154 yards, surpassing the old mark set by Jim Karsatos of Sunny Hills, and, more recently, Ohio State. Foley broke former Capistrano Valley star Burt Call’s county career passing mark with a two-season total of 5,264 yards. In pass-happy 1985, Angelovic was merely one of six county quarterbacks to pass for more than 2,000 yards.

Still, Edison Coach Bill Workman can’t help but wonder what Angelovic might have accomplished if he had allowed him to throw more often.

“He’d get as much attention as those guys (Stark and Foley) if we threw every down like they did,” Workman said. “That’s just not our style . . . not if we can help it. We have a running back.

“We could throw 40 times a game and lead the county in passing. We have the receivers to do it. But that can backfire on you.”

All of this will probably have less bearing on where Angelovic continues playing than his size, which the Edison media guide generously lists as 6-feet, 175 pounds.

“I’m hoping to at least go to a small college and play,” he said. “I don’t know how much demand there is for a 5-11 quarterback in major college football these days.”

Off to college. Where does the time go? Strosnider can remember a time when his next-door neighbor’s biggest touchdowns were imaginary ones, thrown beneath the street lights of Squires Circle.

“I can’t really say whether he looked up to me,” Strosnider said. “But we did spend a lot of time together, now that I look back at it.”

Tonight, Strosnider will watch Angelovic do the throwing. And this time, it’s for real.

The Game

The Teams: Long Beach Poly vs. Edison

What: CIF Big Five Championship.

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Where: Anaheim Stadium.