Morse: A Date With Greatness? : Football: Coach John Shacklett won’t say if this is the best he’s had, ‘but it’s going to take a hell of a ballclub to beat us.’

SAN DIEGO — Homecoming at Morse is Nov. 2, and the quarterback of the best high school football team in the county doesn’t have a date for the dance.

Teddy Lawrence isn’t really worried, but two weeks from now, he might be.

“I’m scared that I’m going to ask too late,” he said. “You go around and ask a certain amount of girls, and then they’re going to say: ‘Teddy’s stressing for a date. He needs a date bad.’ ”

How is it that a guy who gets so many recruiting letters that he doesn’t even bother to read them anymore is dateless for the big dance of fall?

“I think Teddy’s kind of shy,” Morse lineman Salua Poutoa said. “Teddy’s the shy type. But he’ll get a date.”

Probably so, but that may be the biggest challenge he faces until the section playoffs. Top-ranked Morse (4-0) is crushing its opponents as if they were wine grapes, and the toughest part of its season is already over. In a rematch of last year’s 3-A championship game Sept. 7, Morse pounded Rancho Buena Vista, 28-14, to paste a pleasant memory over last season’s 21-7 loss in the final.

John Shacklett has coached at Morse since 1971, won two 3-A championships and been runner-up two other times, but this is something a bit different. Morse is so good that it has piqued the curiosity of an entire community. Of course, like all coaches, Shacklett fidgets when asked if this is his greatest team, but you get the idea that if it came to picking one, this would be his choice.

“I’ve never had a team that has gotten off this quickly, and I’ve had some good teams in the past,” he said. “I don’t want to get too rambunctious about predictions right now. We’ve got a good ballclub, and it’s going to take a hell of a ballclub to beat us. I don’t know if there’s one out there right now that can.”

It’s hard to imagine there is, considering that Lawrence and running back Gary Taylor are the top two rushers in the county. Lawrence has 504 yards in 27 carries for an 18.7 average. Taylor, a junior whose dad wouldn’t let him play varsity last year because he was too small, has 887 yards in 58 carries for a 15.3 average. That’s 222 yards a game, and Taylor, who jumped from 155 pounds to 168 since last year, has another season remaining. Scary.

Throw in five returning offensive lineman, including Poutoa, who at 290 has never been told he’s too small to do anything, and a defense that is plenty good enough to complement (and compliment) an offense averaging 49 points a game, and this team looks capable of providing Shacklett with his first undefeated season.

Morse fans are gobbling it up. Shacklett keeps getting calls from people who ask: “Who are you playing this week?” And then they want to know how good his team really is. Section champs, maybe? Best in state, perhaps?

All this is fun, but Shacklett is feeling the pressure that goes with the excitement of being the best team in town. The other day in a meeting with his coaches, he got “a little fired up” when it was suggested that maybe Morse should put a few new wrinkles in its plan for this Saturday’s game against Lincoln. Morse had a bye last weekend.

“I think I’m concerned about getting the kids moving again,” he said. “So I put some pressure on myself for this ballgame. They (the assistant coaches) said: ‘We want to do this, and we want to do that.’ I said: ‘No, We’re not doing anything new this week. We’re going to do the same thing we’ve done the last four ball games.’ I kind of told them off, and I realized at the time that I’d gotten myself kind of worked up about the ballgame.”

That kind of concern may not be necessary. Lincoln (0-4) is off to its worst start since 1969, and even Shacklett concedes this shouldn’t be much of a game if Morse plays up to its capabilities.

“It’s always a competitive game, but quite honestly, it’s never been this lopsided on paper,” he said. “I’m more worried about our players being too keyed up. We played the worst game of the entire season last year against Lincoln, and it’s all because I probably didn’t do a very good job of settling them down.”

Too ready can be as bad as not ready enough. Psychology is something for a coach to fret about. Ask a player, particularly a high school player, and he wants only to play. Tee it up, kick it off, and get on with it.

For Lawrence, there isn’t much to analyze. He says simply: “I don’t think there’s any team in the state that can beat us.”

And if that’s true, it’s largely because of him. He has taken advantage of his athletic gifts and decided he can live with playing quarterback for a little while longer. Lawrence, you see, wanted to be a wide receiver, but Shacklett figured last season that this was a player who should be getting his hands on the ball a lot.

“It was hard for him,” Shacklett said. “He wasn’t convinced he wanted to be a quarterback. He was a quarterback because his coach wanted him to be a quarterback.”

Now he is a quarterback because he wants to be a quarterback. At least until next season.

“I don’t think I want to play quarterback in college,” said Lawrence, who has been recruited by Washington, San Diego State, UCLA and Colorado, among others. “I like it. It’s fun. But I don’t think I can get to the NFL playing quarterback.”

That might sound a little pretentious for a high school player, but Shacklett says Lawrence is a rare discovery.

“He’s a hell of an athlete,” Shacklett said. “He has an ability to make the big play, and it looks so natural.”

So naturally, he’s getting a lot of attention. One teacher made photo copies of an article that had appeared in the newspaper about Lawrence and had each student read it.

Has he become a celebrity?

“They’re not going to recognize me like I’m Michael Jordan or something,” Lawrence said. “If somebody says ‘This is Teddy Lawrence,’ they’ll say ‘Oh, so you’re Teddy Lawrence.’ ”

The bulletin boards at Morse are covered with accounts of each week’s victories. After the Rancho Buena Vista game, Taylor awoke at 6 a.m. when he heard commotion in the living room. Who? His parents. With every newspaper they could find spread out all over the floor.

Which brings us, by way of the back door, back to Poutoa, who would like it to be known that the offensive line has something to do with all of this.

“Every time I read about Teddy and Gary I just look at it and say ‘Yeah, they wouldn’t have had all that if it wasn’t for us,’ ” he said. “I just want everybody to know that the offensive line gets a little bit of the credit.”

Aw, what’s your gripe, Salua? You’ve got a date to the homecoming dance, don’t you?

Poutoa: “Oh yeah, I have a date.”

Two, in fact.

Poutoa: “I’ll take one to homecoming and I’ll take the other one to the Sweetheart Ball.”

Now the only concern is Lawrence, who is undoubtedly a good bet to find a date. After all, it’s not as if there isn’t interest.

“I think there’s more girls liking me than before,” he said. “Most of them don’t tell me. People come up to me and say ‘So and so likes you, but they’re scared because they don’t know what you’re like.’ ”

Funny how that works. Most defensive players in the county are scared because they know exactly what he’s like.