LCHS Football's Early Days Were Filled With Highs, Lows

The beginnings of the La Cañada High School football can be summed up in several, briefs notations.

The advent of a full-scale football program. . . .Official notification of joining the Rio Hondo League. . .A new $3 million stadium to be ready in the following season. . .Introduction of first head grid coach Bob Mahoney, who ran up plenty of wins in both varsity baseball and "B" football at San Marino High, and copped seven league titles in the process. . .The historic first football game against St. Francis High, the lopsided 46-7 loss being a rude awakening for the newly named Spartans. . .Linebacker Craig Hobson becoming La Cañada's first all-league selection on the first team. . .Through an administration slip-up, a forfeit of the first three winning games in 1969 was suffered by the LCHS gridders. . . Bad luck continued that year as an unheard-of 17 players were either hurt or ill as the season got under way.

Flipping through the early history pages of La Cañada High football where a "green," untried team rose to stardom in only its second season. The year was 1963. The new high school had opened and, of course, it would field its first varsity football team. It carried a 45-man roster with no seniors as they remained at Pasadena's Muir High during the transition. There were also "B" and "C" teams.

Playing some junior varsity teams, the inexperienced Spartans did win two games in a nine-game season but lost all of their league contests. Standout for the locals was linebacker Craig Hobson, a 5-8, 200-pound rock and sock player, who was recipient of La Cañada's first all-league first-team award. Hobson went on to win "most valuable" recognition from his teammates. Meanwhile, four other Spartans in their first year won honorable mention by the league.

A determined coach Mahoney, seeing the good material around him after the first season, pulled the CIF surprise of the year in 1964 in fielding a league championship club that won eight of 11 games, including a 14-0 CIF playoff victory over much-talented El Segundo High, at the time No. 1 in the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation). They called it La Cañada's "Cinderella" team.