1954: “A Play That Will Live in Infamy”

Hoover principal Floyd Johnson was thinking of making a change when he met with football coach Bob Kirchhoff before the 1954-55 school year.

Johnson was dissatisfied.  A 1953 season that began with much promise was sullied by a 4-4-1 finish that included a 39-0 loss to rival San Diego High.

Johnson would retire after the 1955-56 school year. He had been at Hoover since it opened in 1930 and had guided the East San Diego school as it  became one of the most respected academically and athletically in Southern California.

The Cardinals had their share of victories against San Diego High in all sports but football.

After an 0-8 beginning in 1948, Kirchhoff had built a strong program, including a 28-13 win over the Cavers in 1949.  Five successive losses followed.

“Floyd Johnson hated San Diego with a passion,” said the late coach Walt Harvey, who remembered Johnson as a powerful community figure who would sit on the players’ bench during basketball games and walk the sidelines at football games.

Johnson, possibly thinking of retirement in a couple years and that this marked his school team’s best chance to beat the Hillers, posed a direct question to Kirchhoff:  “Are we going to beat San Diego this year?”

Kirchhoff, now aware of a tenuous position, was confident, answering in the affirmative that yes, this was going to be the Cardinals’ year.

Hoover was returning more than 30 players and a letterman at every position.

Johnson would give Kirchhoff one more chance.  “If we don’t win it, I’m going to make a change,” Kirchhoff years later said the principal promised.

Rumors had circulated that Kirchhoff’s line coach, Herbert (Hub) Foote, a 1941 Hoover graduate, would be the next coach of the Cardinals.  Foote thought he had a promise from Johnson.

But events that began a couple years before would work against Foote…and Kirchhoff.

Stan Williamson, the coach of San Diego’s Naval Air team, had completed a military deployment and was returning to his pre-Korean War position as head football coach at Santa Barbara State.

The Gauchos’ football and baseball  coach since 1950 was Roy Engle, who would be out of a job.

Engle was a Johnson favorite.

Engle scored the Cardinals’ first touchdown against San Diego and was the pivotal figure in their first victory over the city rivals when Engle led a fourth-quarter touchdown drive to a 7-6 victory over the Hilltoppers in 1935.

After graduating from USC, Engle returned to Hoover.  He was the 24-year-old head coach of the 1942 baseball team that was led by future major leaguer Ray Boone and won the CIF Southern Section championship.

Engle now returned to Hoover a second time in 1953, appointed by Johnson to teach science and biology.  Kirchhoff’s coaching assistants were Bill Matthie, Don Henson, and Hub Foote.

It was with this backdrop that Hoover and Kirchhoff  embarked on the 1954 campaign.

CARDINALS OFF FAST

Hoover passed its first test, a big one.  The Cardinals fell behind, 13-0, at Santa Monica, then rolled to a 34-20 victory over passing ace Lee Grosscup and dealing the two-time defending CIF champion Vikings their first loss since 1952.

Point Loma, middle of the road but tough, also took a 13-0 lead, but  John Adams, the 6-foot, 2-inch, 215-pound fullback who was the prized recruit in Southern California prep circles, and quarterback Gene Leek brought the Cardinals back to a 20-13 victory.

Adams, a member of Hoover’s City Prep League-champion 880-yard relay team could cover 100 yards in 10 seconds.

Adams bruised  La Jolla for three touchdowns and 160 yards rushing and ran his Southern California-leading scoring total to 101 points in a 27-0 victory.

(Adams’s La Jolla thrusts were preceded by  equally explosive efforts in routs of Kearny, 45-0, St. Augustine, 66-0, and Pasadena Muir, 39-14).

—Hoover now was 7-0 and its destiny, and ultimately Kirchhoff’s future as football coach, would be decided against the 6-1 San Diego Cavemen.

—A crowd of more than 15,000, largest in the series since 1949, turned out on a damp evening and braced for the most compelling battle in the history of the rivalry.

(Although contested in Balboa Stadium, next to the San Diego campus, the game was the feature of Hoover’s Homecoming Day).

—The Cardinals and Cavers sparred through the first half, Hoover stopping San Diego on its seven-yard line in the second quarter, while Hoover did not strike beyond San Diego’s 37 until the third quarter, when the game changed.

—On third down from the Cardinals’ 29 halfback Dan Bonetti raced to the 35, then lateraled to big Adams, who took off down the sideline.

—San Diego’s Leonard Kary made what Jim Trinkle of The San Diego Union described as a “desperate, diving tackle” on the 2-yard line, bringing down Adams after a 63-yard run.

—San Diego linebacker Tom Collins stopped Adams at the one-foot line on the next play. .

HOLDING AND NO PASS INTERFERENCE

—Trinkle wrote:  “The next two maneuvers—in the mind of Hoover coach Bob Kirchhoff—will live in infamy in Hockerville.”

—Denny Hill crossed the goal line at right tackle but Hoover was penalized for holding, pushing Hoover back to the 15.

Kirchhoff contended the penalty was called after Hill scored and should have been assessed on the subsequent kickoff, which meant that Kirchhoff was misreading the rule book or the newspaper report was inaccurate.

You can’t have a holding penalty on  a scoring play, count the touchdown, and then assess the penalty.

—The next play was a pass into the end zone from Leek to John Vanderlinde.  “If there was interference, it wasn’t detected by the officials,” wrote Trinkle.

—A photograph of the play was in the column next to Trinkle’s report on the front page of the Union‘s sports section.  The right arm of San Diego’s Art Powell is clearly inside the left arm of Vanderlinde’s.

—The official on the play was Jack Garner, a friend of Kirchhoff’s who worked with Kirchhoff and former Hoover star George Stephenson as part of the chain crew at Chargers games for more than 20 years.

—“He told me, ‘How could I make a call in that situation against San Diego  High?’” Kirchhoff said years later.

—Joe Banks pushed over from the one-yard line with 6:16 to play for the game’s only score, set up by Pete Gumina’s 25-yard completion to Powell.

—Hoover moved to the Cavers’ 12 late in the game, but tackle Don Hiler sacked Leek for a 16-yard loss and and the Cardinals were done.

—The favored Redbirds were beaten on the scoreboard and in the statistics.  San Diego led, 9-5, in first downs and in total yardage, 238-127. Adams had 103 yards in 16 carries.

Willie West led San Diego with 108 yards in 13 carries.  Leek was 0 for 7 passing and Gumina completed 5 of 9 for 87 yards.

—Hoover beat neophyte Lincoln, 14-7, in its final regular-season game the next week.

The Cardinals’ somnambulant performance was partly influenced by Kirchhoff’s  playing the game under wraps, with scouts from potential CIF Southern Section playoff opponents on hand.

—Leading, 12-0, at halftime, Hoover dropped a 20-18 decision to Compton in a first-round playoff  shrouded in fog at Hoover the next week.

—The fog was a sadly prophetic omen for Kirchhoff, who had coached his last game and would be replaced by Engle.

CONFIRMATION

News of Kirchhoff’s being out didn’t surface until May of the following spring.  Evening Tribune reporter Jerry Brucker contacted Johnson after rumors began to circulate.

Johnson and Kirchhoff had met the previous week, according to the principal, and Johnson told Brucker, “It wasn’t a complete surprise.  He told me at the start of the season he thought he might coach just one year.  He had a good team coming up and wanted to see them through, then would probably hang ’em up.”

Kirchhoff, at times volatile in practice and in game situations, allowed only that the timing  was not to his advantage. “I had a pretty good job offered me about three months ago.  Guess it’s too late now.”

Kirchhoff could have stayed at Hoover, he said.  “I wouldn’t do any coaching.  I’d be a classroom instructor.”

Johnson continued to be vague when asked by Brucker about a new coach.  “We’ll be looking around, I guess,” said Johnson. “We have no definite plans for the non-uniform spring training.  It might be someone on our physical education staff now or someone from the outside.”

Bob Kirchhoff coached again, as head coach at Brown Military Academy in 1957, and accepted the position of track coach after Clairemont High opened its doors in 1958, Clairemont stunned favored Point Loma and the Chieftains won the Western League dual meet championship in 1959.

The man appointed by Johnson to replace Kirchhoff was Roy Engle.