Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.
The win-loss records of the Sun's Almost Original Ten high school football teams: Canyon Springs 7-2 Desert Pines 6-3 Cheyenne 5-4 Western 5-5 Valley 2-7 Chaparral 2-7 Bonanza 2-8 Eldorado 1-7 Rancho 0-9 Clark 0-9
Pioneers vs. Jaguars. The semi-immovable force against the sometimes irresistible object. Canyon Springs, 7-2, vs. Desert Pines, 6-3, in the battle for inner-city football supremacy in Southern Nevada.
It simply doesn't get any better than Friday night's regular-season finale at Canyon Springs, which I am calling the Almost Original Ten Bowl, in recognition of the old - or at least older - Las Vegas-area high schools (and some of their newer cousins) that were the only ones knocking helmets when I arrived in town.
Upon further review, considering that higher-ranked teams will be involved in playoff games this weekend thanks to a Nevada postseason system that is so convoluted it makes the Bowl Championship Series look like basic math, maybe it does get better than Canyon Springs vs. Desert Pines.
But having once attended a school like theirs - only mine had windows with warped wooden frames that wouldn't open on a hot, humid day - I will always have a place under my Kevlar vest for teams such as the Pioneers and Jaguars. Teams that succeed in spite of obstacles, such as having players who walk to school or ride the bus instead of borrowing their old man's Chrysler with the soft, Corinthian leather.
Yeah, I know. Inner-city schools usually don't have names like Canyon Springs and Desert Pines. They usually have "Tech" or "Vocational" as part of their title. But having visited both campuses on Tuesday, I can assure you there's nothing soft or, for that matter, Corinthian, about their surrounding areas.
Desert Pines is named for the vegetation on the upscale Desert Pines Golf Course, one of its neighbors on Las Vegas' near east side. There are also seven mature desert pines in the north end zone of its football field that form a bucolic field-goal net.
With the sun setting on the nearby mountains, wind sprints at the end of a Jaguars practice would be quite the idyllic experience, if not for the rhythm of the city and the kids talking tough in the parking lots.
The area around Canyon Springs, situated off Cheyenne Avenue in North Las Vegas, sounds like a construction site. The Pioneers' neighbors include Las Vegas Paving and a Republic Services trash transfer station. Everything in the neighborhood either rumbles or is partially concealed by dust. Or smells bad.
Everything, that is, except Matt Jenkins, Canyon Springs' second-year coach who at 5-foot-8 is too small to rumble and, thanks to what appears to be boundless energy, doesn't stand in place long enough to gather dust. For a football coach, he didn't smell bad, either.
Jenkins, a native of Redlands, Calif., who coached at Cornell in the Ivy League and under Joe Paterno at Penn State as a graduate assistant, said he owes a lot of his success to Joe Pa's sage advice.
"He said to surround yourself with assistant coaches who are smarter than you are," said Jenkins, 33, who guided the Pioneers to a 7-4 record in his first season as their coach last year.
Two of Jenkins' assistants are former UNLV and arena football standout Hunkie Cooper and Brandon Scott, whose brother, Derek, was the Rebels' starting quarterback before Cooper in the 1990s.
Jenkins said he doesn't get caught up in labels sometimes used in conjunction with inner-city schools and students. "We just have a bunch of good kids who are here to go to school. Academics are the first priority," he said.
Paul Bennett, the coach at Desert Pines, can relate to his players because he was once like them, having played his high school football in a hardscrabble part of Pittsburgh.
"Bill Fralic kicked my butt," Bennett said of high-school trench battles with the former Pitt and Atlanta Falcons stalwart.
The Jaguars are unusual in that they were once a powerhouse - Desert Pines, with all-everything running back Cornell Johnson blazing a trail to the end zone, was state runner-up in 2002 - but then slipped about as far as you can before embarking on a turnaround. In last year's season opener, the Jaguars were torched for 76 points by Shadow Ridge.
Success does not always breed success, said Bennett, who endured a 1-9 season in his first as DP head coach last year after serving as an assistant on those good Jaguars teams.
"Winning is a selling point, but kids don't always buy into it," Bennett said.
But this year, the Jaguars have made the investment by spending much of the off-season in the weight room. So have the Pioneers. With both teams already qualified for the playoffs, Bennett and Jenkins have a lot to be proud of and little to apologize for, although Jenkins did anyway at practice Tuesday.
It appeared that somebody had tried to break into the field house by kicking in the door. Jenkins talked as if he were personally responsible, which is much preferred to somebody who personally doesn't care.
But I assured him there are schools uptown and in the suburbs where they don't always knock before entering, either.
archive
