Across America fall is football season and kids everywhere are tossing the pigskin around in their streets and backyards. As a child growing up in Malibu during the 70's, Fall was time for the natural transition from Baseball into football.
Every year the ball fields at Malibu Park Junior high (today's Malibu High) came alive with sounds of football. The YMCA ran a flag football league for the younger kids and every weekend there would be 6-8 teams playing flag football on undersized gridirons carved out of the upper baseball field. I can remember the dumping of the equipment bag and like a piñata at a party we all would rush in to grab the good helmet and the special flags that had the propensity to stay attached better. The games were fun but all one had to do was to look down toward the ocean at the main field where the real football was being played.
In full pads and helmets with colorful uniforms that was where the big boys played. It was the Malibu Mustangs, the local Pop Warner Football teams. Who wouldn't want to play for them? The uniforms were crisp and clean of Cardinal and Gold they looked like USC. The Malibu Mustangs had divisional teams that spanned ages from 8 -13 with names like Tiny Might, Mighty Might, Pee Wee, and the Midgets, collectively known as the Malibu Mustangs. Unlike YMCA, you were given your own set of equipment which you were responsible for. We were little gladiators when we put on the gear. We begged our parents to take us to Big 5 to get additional forearm pads to look even more like the pros. The field was regulation size, and it seemed so big. There were no cones marking the sidelines, there was chalk and at each end were goal posts. It was the big time, there were even cheerleaders. Practices lasted into the night after school in the rain and mud no matter what the weather. It was much more organized, kids were cut, and there was no guarantee you would get to play. Every week we had a weigh in which I feared because it meant the possibility that I might have to move up a level and play with the bigger kids if I was too heavy.
The coaches were serious men like Pete Haynes, John Griffin, Bill Miller, and Russ Banducci who ran tight programs and ran pro style drills. You could not be weak, or they were in your face. When we took the field, we did so like a Roman army marching in formation and chanting our fight song. Like a Maori Haka dance we would follow the team captain, beat our pads, circle the field, and move into our warm ups. Anyone who ever played Mustangs knows the familiar thumping of the thigh pads to clap. Ask anyone who played. THUMP, CLAP, THUMP THUMP, CLAP CLAP, THUMP, CLAP, ... with 30 or so kids running in formation beating on their pads it was an awesome empowering thing that instilled a pride in being from Malibu and something no one who ever played will forget. There were some real tough guys on those teams. You could tell the toughest guys by the stick marks on the helmet. A stick mark is the color of the opposing team left on your helmet after a hard tackle. My first year we traveled and played teams in Watts, Compton and other inner city programs, you learned to toughen up fast. The next year we moved to the Ventura league and played Oxnard, Santa Paula, Ventura, and Filmore. Teams would think we were weak spoiled kids from Malibu but when we circled the field chanting and warming up in formation, they knew we came to play.
If you happen to know someone who played chances are they will tell you that it was some of the best times of their lives and that it helped shape their adult lives. If you Google Malibu Mustangs there will be no results found but for kids growing up in Malibu during the 70's it influenced and formed lifelong memories never to be forgotten.
