Football
After struggling for years, the Steelers began to dominate regional high school football for roughly a 15-year period. Beginning with coach John Tyree, and continuing under coach Dick Bruich, the team peaked in 1987 when it was ranked the best in the nation. The Steeler football team was almost as well known for the traveling "rowdy" fanbase, which followed the team en masse throughout the season and into the playoffs. At home games, much of the town shut down as more than 8,000 maroon and white clad fans filled Steeler Stadium for epic battles with rival schools like Redlands, Pacific, A.B Miller, Eisenhower and Colton.
By the 1990s, the glory days for the team had faded. The reality of an economic downturn ( the Kaiser Steel plant had shut down in 1983) and a continued population boom led to demographic shifts and classroom overcrowding. The addition of new high schools split the talent base and the team fell on hard times - enduring a prolonged string of losing seasons.
Read more about this topic: Fontana High School
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Idon’t enjoy getting knocked about on a football field for other people’s amusement. I enjoy it if I’m being paid a lot for it.”
—David Storey (b. 1933)