Local prep football teams brace for season

Eric Johnson all by bypassed his lunch hour on team photo day

Thursday to make sure that uniform pants and jersey numbers were

correctly assigned to his players.

As Johnson quickened his pace from room to room, he shouted

instructions to his players that following an hour break for lunch, that

they were to assemble on the Fountain Valley High football practice

fields for a photo session that would take a little more than one hour to

complete.

As mundane as the photo setting would be on a hot and muggy

afternoon, it is a mundane - albeit, necessary one - for any high school

football coach.

Johnson, however, would have liked nothing better than to forego

the cameras and go straight to opening kickoff on Sept. 10, the night the

Barons host Dana Hills in Johnson’s first game as Fountain Valley’s head

coach.

He takes over for George Berg, who retired from the position

following last season.

‘There’s so much going on right now, but I’m looking forward to the

start of the season,’ Johnson said as he played mediator between Fountain

Valley’s uniform manager and a trio of players, who were seeking to get

the numbers they wanted. ‘We just want to play some football.’

With the first week of practice nearing an end, Johnson is finally

getting a first-hand look at his initial squad, which should contend for

the Sunset League title.

‘We’ll know more about where we stand in the next week,’ he said.

‘Right now, it’s too early to tell [ Stepping Column ]anything.’

Over at the Edison camp, Coach Dave White and his Chargers have one

week left to prepare for their season lid-lifter, which takes place on

the island of Oahu. At 5 p.m. on Sept. 2, Edison will take on Punahou at

Aloha Stadium.

The Chargers will be out to end a streak in which they didn’t post

a victory in the final seven weeks of the 1998 season, in which they

finished 3-7 overall.

‘We should be a much-improved team in ‘99,’ White said on Thursday,

three days prior to Edison’s departure for Hawaii. ‘Last year, we were

young and inexperienced, and this year, we’re still young, but now we

have a little experience. Hopefully, that will help us turn things

around. This team is hungry.’

With youth continuing to be served at Edison, depth - or lack of it

- is the concern for Coach Tony Ciarelli at Huntington Beach.

The Oilers were 6-4-1 and reached the postseason playoffs for the

first time in five years a year ago, but many of the key players from

that ’98 squad were lost to graduation. Ciarelli says his three-man

quarterback rotation will be led by junior Casey Ryder, with a pair of

sophomores - ‘yes, sophomores,’ Ciarelli says - vying for playing time.

‘We need to stay healthy in order to be successful,’ Ciarelli said,

‘because we don’t have much depth. We’ll have a lot of players playing

both ways, which is demanding. We’ll need to be well-conditioned come

game time.’

The Oilers should be - Ciarelli, along with his wife, Stephanie,

run the strength-training program at the school.

Both Edison and Huntington Beach finished their photo day on

Wednesday.