Why not the View?
[El Monte] – Mountain View’s first year of varsity football was 1972 under coach Bob Casper as it finished 0-9 and got shut out five times.
The Vikings first winning season wouldn’t come until 1975 as they were still under Casper and finished 5-4.
In 1979 View got into the playoffs under coach Chuck Magnuson for the first time in school history, but lost to Royal Oak 39-14 in the first round finishing 4-7 overall.
The 1981 season was another bad season for the Vikings as they finished 2-8 under new head coach Steve Alonzo however Alonzo was the last coach to beat Arroyo – a 14-13 victory.
Mountain View opened Viking Stadium in 1984 but the season didn’t go well. View was shutout seven times with its lone win coming against Marshall in Week One 7-6.
In 1987, the Vikings got into the playoffs under coach Joe Dankert with a 5-5 record. El Centro Union shut them out in the first round.
Mt. View had the best season to date in 1988 making the playoffs for the second straight season under Dankert but lost to Cajon in the first round.
In 1997, the sixth season with head coach Frank Alonzo at the helm, the Vikings got into the playoffs behind running back Christian Salazar. Alonzo won Coach of the Year honors but Montebello bumped them out in the first round.
The 1997 season was the Vikings last “successful” season.
Why Not The View? is the second of a series.
Here’s a fun observation…many of those two sport kids would not do that now a days. Rich Rodriguez would NEVER of played football for MV or anywhere. Such a prospect would have wrongfully been convinced to stick only to baseball. Then instead of playing in the bigs for 10 years, Rich would of had Tommy John at 18 because from 8 until 18 he played year round in the World Series every weekend.
Mountain View = Mark Keppel or Blair. Please stop with all this nonsense.
Growing up around MT View, the gap is growing between Arroyo and The Vikings
The coaching is light years away, the commitment level of everyone kids and coaches and administration is just different at places like Arroyo or Rosemead. Mt View and SEM share similar enrollment numbers and mind you SEM is only 2 miles away from Mt View they are literally in each other’s backyard. So, what’s the major difference between those two schools? Why has SEM has so much more success than the Vikings?
Two more coming. Lol
These are good articles on Mtn. View football. It was mentioned that in 1979 Chuck Magnuson led the Vikings to the play-offs, but their team in 1980 was as talented a squad as Mtn. View has EVER had. QB was Max Shubin who was as good a passer as the Arroyo QBs of the last 20 years. Receivers Richard Rodriguez-who went on to play pro baseball for 10-plus years, and Hector Spathias-yes the same guy who has done a great job over his years coaching at South El Monte, Bassett and Workman-were very good all-around athletes. They also had some other talented skill players as well. Going into the season, they were probably favored to win the MVL title. Lost 1st league game to Schurr-who went on to win their 1st CIF title that year-and kind of lost their mojo. Were 0-4 before taking out their frustrations on Arroyo in the final game 50-6 at the end of Coach DJ Mac Kinnon’s first year as HC.
The Vikings have had some flashes of hope over the years, but could never seem to put together any kind of consistency. They are in a tough spot football-wise. Not a lot of positive tradition, smallest enrollment in EMUHSD, and majority of kids in that area grow up playing soccer and baseball-most having never played football prior to HS. It was not always that way, but that is what is happening these days. As someone who has been around the City of El Monte and the MVL since high school, things are a little different at a place like Mtn. View as opposed to El Monte, Arroyo, South or Rosemead. The expectation level is different, the commitment level is different, kids are choosing to only play 1 sport instead of playing multiple sports. On that 1980 team, every one of their skill guys were multi-sport athletes-VERY GOOD multi-sport athletes! How many multi-sport kids do they have now? They have a good boys soccer tradition, along with baseball and track-but how many of those kids play football? To succeed at a place like MVHS-or any school in the EMUHSD-you need to get the best athletes on campus to play! Any coach that can do that, will have some success.
From T. Peterson: Great info Coach. We have a lot of history on MVL teams going back wins and losses wise but not always on specific players, etc. Great info on the players and the 1980 Mt. View team.
If we can get a third installment on this cold-to-lukewarm program, I daresay we’d have the makings for a Hollywood movie.