News Alert: Griffins Win on the Ground

Everything about Friday night’s rematch between the football teams of Los Alamitos and Mater Dei high schools was smaller than the original.

Smaller stakes--a berth in the Division I semifinals was on the line this time, instead of a crack at the top-ranked prep team in the country.

Smaller crowd--right around 15,000, about half the audience that turned up last December on the scientific challenge that, yes, it is indeed possible to see a good football game played at Anaheim Stadium.

Smaller Los Alamitos winning streak--only four in a row, as opposed to the 47-game unbeaten streak monster that almost ate Orange County, one high school football league at a time.

Smaller hero, too.

Ryan Gragnano, 5-8, 170 pounds, nicknamed “Rhino” for probably some of the same reasons the chubby kid in class is called “Slim,” gets easily overlooked amid the crimson tide of Los Alamitos football. For one, you can hardly see him when he lines up, attempting to peer over the Griffins’ beefy offensive guards and tackles. For another, he plays running back for the Griffins. This means Gragnano gets to pass-block a lot, run a few dummy screen routes and congratulate wide receivers Tony Hartley and Stan Guyness after their half-field romps into the end zone.

In their first 11 games this season, the Griffins passed for 2,700 yards and 27 touchdowns.

Along the way, Gragnano rushed for 464 yards and four touchdowns.

“He’s the best running back on this team,” Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes says, which is nice, even if it’s a little like being called the best surfer in Nebraska. Gragnano does lead the Griffins in rushing--somebody has to--but, statistically, he doesn’t rank among the top 70 in Orange County.

But without him Friday night, Los Alamitos’ 1995 season would have ended the same away as 1994 crashed and burned on them--withering up and blowing away on the field against Mater Dei.

In a 23-14 piece of atonement at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach, Los Alamitos scored three touchdowns against the Monarch defense--and Gragnano had every one of them.

On a night when Los Alamitos’ all-county quarterback, Kevin Feterik, was intercepted three times--twice in a jittery third quarter that nearly cost the Griffins all of their 16-point halftime lead--Gragnano provided three touchdown runs, two from nine yards out and a one-yard plunge that finally blunted Mater Dei’s comeback ideas with 5:18 left.

Gragnano rushed 13 times for 75 yards. Nothing flashy, nothing extraordinary, just the dirty work, time and again. He got the yards that Los Alamitos needed most--near the goal line and in the middle of the field in the second half, when the Griffins had to burn some time in between their own interceptions and Mater Dei touchdowns.

His contribution wasn’t by design, just necessity.

“We put in two running plays for tonight that we thought could be successful,” Barnes said. “But we blocked them better than I thought we would, so we kept going back to the run.

“Both our running game and our offensive line have been maligned all year. But our offensive line has been on a mission since the Esperanza game [Los Alamitos’ lone defeat of the season], and Ryan has been on a mission all year. He probably plays as hard as anybody around, especially for someone his size.”

His size was all but irrelevant on the game’s decisive play: fourth and goal on the Mater Dei one, Barnes bypassing the field goal with a 16-14 lead and gambling to put the game away with barely five minutes remaining.

Gragnano got the ball and plowed into the right side of the line. Initially, he was stopped short. But his economy-sized legs kept churning and within a blink of an eye, two Monarch defenders were on their backs and Gragnano was rolling around in the end zone with his third touchdown.

“All I said was, ‘I’m getting the ball and I’m going to score,’ ” Gragnano said, still fairly cranked up a half-hour later. “There was no doubt in my mind. The game was on the line, I wasn’t going to be denied. I don’t care if it was me against their whole team. I would not be denied.”

Gragnano readily acknowledges his lot with the Griffins and accepts it, happily.

“We always have such great quarterbacks and receivers at Los Al that the running game is secondary,” he said. “And that’s fine. I’m on this team to win.”

And winning Friday, against the team that ended The Streak and the championship run a year ago, made up for a lot of missed headlines.

“Since we lost to them last year,” Gragnano said, frowning, “I’ve had this sick feeling in my stomach. Finally, that feeling is gone.”

And now the Griffins are on to the semifinals, next week against Los Angeles Loyola, led by a tiny running back who. . . .

How big is he, anyway?

“Five-eight, 170,” Gragnano said firmly.

At which point, Val Whitaker, the mother of Gragnano’s girlfriend, planted a kiss on his cheek and made a declaration not even a Monarch could contest:

“He’s big enough.”