If Chino's for real, the climb up Mt. Baldy will be fun
If somebody would have told me that two games into football season, Chino would be the only undefeated team in the Mt. Baldy League I probably would have stopped listening. However, the same team that went winless last season is now 2-0 (and that record hardly does justice to what Chino has done so far).
After last night's resounding victory over Oak Park, the Cowboys have hung 42 and 49 points on their 2010 opponents. Not a bad way to break an 18-game losing streak. A logical question: what is the caliber of the two teams Chino has faced? Whittier, a 42-0 victim of the Cowboys Week 1, last made the playoffs in 2006 but it was Chino on the business end of a 35-13 blowout when these two met last year. Whittier went 5-5 in 2009, including two wins over playoff teams, one of which was a 10-2 L.A. Roosevelt team.
Oak Park, whom Chino hammered 49-19 last night, made the playoffs a season ago in the same league as SoCal super power Oaks Christian (who smoked Oak Park 56-0 last season) and tellingly lost 21-0 in 2009 to Don Lugo, the Mt. Baldy League's third-place finisher. A win over Oak Park is nothing to write home about but it's no small feat for a Chino team coming off an 0-10 season. All the Cowboys can do is beat the team lined up across from them.
If Chino is a playoff contender its first season in the Mt. Baldy League, this race is going to be a fun one. With four automatic playoff berths available now that the Cowboys expanded the league to seven teams, this league is as wide open as I can remember.
Defending champ Colony, who got its first win of the season against a solid L.A. Gafiield team last night, is my favorite to win the league as of right now. Two games ago, I would have put my money on Chaffey but the Tigers trailed in the third quarter of their season opening 35-21 win over an Alta Loma team that lost to Carter 51-7 the next week. Then Chaffey absorbed a 55-8 beating at the hands of Colton, which, granted, is strong year in and year out.
I figured the final two playoff spots would go to a Don Lugo program that has made the playoffs six out of the last seven years and a seemingly up-and-coming Garey squad with the best player in the league, receiver Dominique Williams.
Chino is at least putting itself in the conversation for third or fourth place and the top of the league is more uncertain than it has been in some time.
About Clay
Clay Fowler has been covering high school sports for six years in California and Texas. He was born in Dallas, attended the University of Texas and worked in Central Texas before joining the Daily Bulletin staff in 2006.
Email Clay here
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