Santa Monica-Palisades Grid Bowl Inspires Benefit Cage Clash

The Palisades and Santa Monica high school football teams met last week in the seventh annual Rotary Bowl. Santa Monica won handily to take a 4-2-1 lead in the series.

The bowl game, sponsored by Rotary clubs in the neighboring communities, has been a natural rivalry since it inaugurated football competition between the two schools, and most of the games have been closely contested. Moreover, since passage of Proposition 13 cut into money that might have gone into each school’s athletic fund, the game has raised badly needed money for Santa Monica and Palisades football.

Now basketball is getting into the act. Service clubs from the bay area are getting together to sponsor the first regular-season meeting between cage teams from the schools. The date is Dec. 19, but a time and a site have yet to be determined.

The team that gets the home-court advantage will be decided by a coin flip at a luncheon at 11:45 a.m. Oct. 23 at the Miramar Sheraton in Santa Monica. The school that wins the flip also will receive $500 from the Santa Monica Bay Area Optimist Club to help promote the game. Tickets for the lunch are $10, and reservations must be made by Oct. 21 at 394-6077.

Palisades Coach Jerry Marvin has long had strong basketball teams, and his squad won a Los Angeles City championship in 1969, beating Reseda in the finale. Marvin has had good teams in recent years, but they have had the bad luck to play in the same league as perennial City champion Crenshaw, which won a state championship last season under Coach Willie West.

Santa Monica has fielded some of the CIF-Southern Section’s strongest teams during the last decade, first under Coach Gary Luttel and more recently under Coach Cliff Hunter.

Thirty-three West Los Angeles College athletes from last year have transferred to four-year universities, and all of the transferring sophomores were offered either scholarships or financial aid, according to Jack Fujimoto, WLAC president.

The recipients were 18 football players, all five upperclassmen from the basketball squad and 10 baseball players.

The football contingent included the top passing combination of quarterback Herman Evans (Eastern New Mexico) and wide receiver Stephen Baker, a Hamilton High School graduate who is at Fresno State.

Cagers and their new schools are Rob Bloom, Cal Poly Pomona; Angelo Hudson, Cal State Chico; Ron Gabriel, UC Santa Barbara; Keith Saffo, San Francisco State, and Frank Boyd, Cal State Long Beach.

Among the baseball players, five wound up at Southern California schools. Jim Vatcher (a Palisades High graduate) and Mike Reyna are at Cal State Northridge, Mike Aspray at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Lee Carballo at UC Santa Barbara and Mike Oliver at UCLA.

Three baseball players signed contracts with major league organizations: Dejon Watson (a former Santa Monica High player) with the Kansas City Royals and Victor Hithe (formerly of Palisades High) and Gayron Jackson with the Houston Astros.