(Photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle)
By Connor Letourneau
Updated Aug 26, 2022 9:02 a.m.
Sitting inside his cramped office, South San Francisco High School football coach Frank Moro leaned forward in his chair, counted the 23 names on his varsity roster and unleashed a deep sigh.
Last December, with poor student turnout forcing the Warriors’ program to the brink of extinction, school officials coaxed Moro back to the sideline for the first time in eight years. But after 8½ months pleading for kids to join the team, he still enters Friday night’s season opener against Richmond’s Kennedy High unsure if he has done enough.
Interest cratered in recent years as South San Francisco High’s once-revered program became a regional punch line. With no juniors or seniors on the team last year, the Warriors dropped their varsity program and played only at the junior varsity level — a move Peninsula Athletic League officials granted under one condition: that the school would need to revive its varsity team in 2022 or risk elimination of the whole program.
“I was worried we would lose everything if we didn’t get our numbers up,” said Moro, 59, a third-generation South San Franciscan who guided the Warriors to six playoff berths during his first stint as head coach (2002-13). “I just told myself, ‘You know what? I still have a little bit of energy left.’”
Moro, who last coached the Warriors in 2013, returned this year after league officials considered axing the once-proud program. (Photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle)
Stories like South San Francisco High’s are increasingly common throughout the Bay Area, where declining football participation reflects state and national trends. According to a recent California Interscholastic Federation survey, the number of high school football players in the state has dropped from 92,020 in 2020 to 86,858 this season, marking the sixth straight annual survey in which football enrollment fell. Participation wasn’t tracked in 2021 because of the pandemic.
Research from the National Federation of State High School Associations suggests that, outside of football-mad areas such as the South, interest in the sport has declined throughout the United States. This is rooted in a slew of factors, including parental concerns over concussion risks and an increase in high school athletes who specialize in one sport.
When lagging student participation gives way to extended losing streaks and even more pronounced safety concerns for remaining players, school officials must weigh whether to eliminate football. Former South San Francisco High rivals Westmoor High (Daly City) and Oceana High (Pacifica) are among the many local institutions to have cut the sport.
Those facts heighten stakes for coaches desperate to boost participation numbers in time for Friday’s season openers. Though injury concerns are valid, few — if any — other sports can match the unifying power of football.
During the Warriors’ heyday, Clifford Field on fall Fridays was an essential gathering place. The smell of booster club barbecue and “world-famous” teriyaki bowls filled the air. Young and old community members from various ethnic backgrounds sat shoulder to shoulder as they chanted, “GO SOUTH CI-TY!”
South San Francisco High revived its varsity football program this season, but its future remains uncertain, an increasingly common concern in the Bay Area. (Photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle)
“Growing up in South City, it was the main part of the community,” said Warriors defensive coordinator Kolone Pua, who played for South San Francisco High in the late 1980s and saw his four sons cycle through the program. “If we lost that, we’d be losing a big part of our family. All we’d have is memories.”
At South San Francisco High’s freshman orientation, Moro finished pitching a group of ninth-grade boys on joining the program when he overheard an upperclassman in the hallway.
“The football team here is garbage,” Moro recalled the senior telling some baby-faced schoolmates. “Don’t even bother.”
Moro was stunned. Not too long ago, Warriors football players were among the school’s most envied students. Now, with 24 straight losses and counting, they are sometimes ridiculed for wearing their jerseys to class on game days.
Since its last win almost five years ago, the program has rotated through five head coaches and been outscored 1,108-97. Given that the Warriors have often trailed by at least 35 at halftime, many of their third and fourth quarters had a running clock. “Our guys haven’t really even experienced a full football game,” Moro acknowledged.
“Our own cheerleaders talk down to us,” senior running back/linebacker Troy Ramirez said. “It’s like, ‘Are you serious?’ You come to our games to support us, yet you’re talking all this nonsense in class.”
That environment has contributed to South San Francisco High’s low participation. Early last week, the Warriors had 27 varsity players and as many as 27 on JV. But as the first game neared, several players stopped attending practice, apparently worried about potential embarrassment.
Little more than 24 hours before Friday’s opener, the Warriors had just 20 available varsity players (two were injured; one was suspended) and another 12 to 15 on JV. This means almost every player must play offense, defense and special teams — quite the big ask for a group loaded with relative football newbies.
“Frank has really done a bang-up job in my eyes of trying to hold things together,” South San Francisco High athletic director Matt Schaukowitch said. “But at the end of the day, if the numbers aren’t there, they’re just not there.”
Part of the problem for the Warriors and other prep programs is fewer parents enrolling their kids in youth football leagues. According to data from the National Sports and Society Survey, tackle football participation among 6- to 12-year-olds fell by 20% between 2008 and 2018 — the largest decline among any age group in the sport.
The study showed that parents in suburbs like South San Francisco tend to disapprove of youth tackle football more than parents in rural areas. When a middle schooler in the Warriors’ district excels in a tackle league, he is far more likely to attend a private school such as Archbishop Riordan or St. Ignatius.
“It’s hard to compete when the private schools are taking a lot of the best kids from your area,” Pua said. “You’re stuck with whoever doesn’t want to go or can’t afford it.”
South San Francisco High’s participation numbers began to decline when concussions became a national talking point in the 1990s, but Moro still won a league title in 2012 with 40 varsity players. Apathy around the program grew six years later when Moro’s successor, Jay Oca, left for Capuchino High in San Bruno.
When Dion Evans — the athletic director at football-less Madison Park Academy in Oakland — decided in January 2020 that he wanted to coach again, he eyed a challenge and scoured the internet for the worst team in the Bay Area. South San Francisco High represented the ultimate rebuild.
After a pandemic-delayed 2020 season, Evans entered summer workouts optimistic, only to have zero juniors or seniors to show up. South San Francisco High then made the unprecedented choice to only field a JV team.
Ramirez, then a junior who had been with the program since his freshman year, tried to move on from football. But he started to realize how much he missed it and returned midway through last season.
“I’ll be glad if the program is still on its feet by the time I’m out of here,” Ramirez said. “High school football is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Every kid deserves that.”
On a breezy afternoon in mid-August, Moro gathered his team at midfield and rested his hands on his hips.
“That was a fun practice, guys,” he said. “You should really be proud of all the progress you’ve made. At the start of this thing, we couldn’t make an extra point. Now look at us.”
In the distance, players could see Sign Hill, where six huge words are spelled out in white concrete: “SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY.”
South San Francisco High varsity players (in gray jerseys) watch JV players do drills during a combined football practice. (Photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle)
At times, Moro has pointed toward those 60-foot letters to remind his players about the values older South San Franciscans value most: diligence, humility, toughness. Undersized and undermanned, the Warriors will likely need all that and more to avoid another winless season.
It’s almost easy to forget that the program has a proud history. Undefeated seasons during the 1960s. Central Coast Section titles in 1980 and 1989. Thrilling wins over rival El Camino High before raucous crowds in the Bell Game, long one of the city’s biggest events. El Camino High fans tried to paint Sign Hill’s letters red before South San Francisco High supporters could coat them in blue.
“To this day, we don’t let our players wear any red colors on the football field,” Pua said. “You can have them on at school, but we don’t want them on the field.”
After watching coaches come and go without a win, athletic director Schaukowitch knew he needed to get his next hire right. Moro was content golfing, teaching physical education and plotting his retirement in Wine Country, but the school’s season without varsity football, the program he’d spent 33 years helping lead, had left him uneasy.
With his wife’s OK, Moro decided to return on a short-term basis, just long enough to resuscitate the program and hand it off to someone like Pua.
It’s brought new challenges: selling scrawny P.E. students on football; toning down his coaching style to meet this generation’s needs; keeping players above the minimum 2.0 GPA requirement.
Though now home to futuristic-looking campuses for big-name biotech firms like Genentech and Amgen, South San Francisco still has many working-class families. Nearly 40% of South San Francisco High’s 1,321 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
“I just see the bigger schools, the better schools not having these problems — at least numbers-wise,” Schaukowitch said. “They might only have 40 players out for varsity football whereas 10 years ago they might have had 60, but they’re not on the verge of dropping a program or dropping JV.”
It should help South San Francisco High that the Peninsula Athletic League has merged with the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League so struggling programs are more evenly matched. The seven other teams in the Warriors’ division went a combined 16-51 last season, many dealing with their own participation problems.
Saratoga High forfeited its final two games because of poor student turnout. Mills High of Millbrae shut down its varsity for the 2021 spring season before returning in the fall and going 0-8. Such precariousness extends throughout the region. More than a third of the 160 high schools in the Central Coast Section, which stretches from King City in Monterey County to San Francisco, do not play football.
“You worry about the game of football,” Moro said. “It’s kind of demeaning walking around the campus all day looking for kids to play. In the past, people wanted to play. That wasn’t a problem.”
Rebuilding his program has meant cutting back: Moro has trimmed down his playbook. Practices are mostly devoted to blocking and tackling. There are occasional “worst-case-scenario” days, where players practice to fill in at other positions.
Those reps came in handy when the team’s starting center suffered a knee injury on the second play of last Friday’s scrimmage at Capuchino High. A tight end shifted over to center; a wide receiver moved to tight end. It was a glimpse of what their season could hold.
If the Warriors last the season.
“The stress is just killing me,” Moro said. “I haven’t been sleeping much. I just lie awake thinking about everything that could go wrong.
“So much for that retired life.”
Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
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Twitter: @Con_Chron