The new stadium was bustling with ebullient fanfare. Its spectators had even spilled onto the sidewalks of East Anapamu Street.
It seemed as if all of Santa Barbara had come to check out the grandest football facility north of the Rose Bowl.
Santa Barbara High School’s student body president couldn’t contain his glee, declaring, “Nowhere in California is there such a beautiful, natural bowl owned by a high school … Nowhere else in America can there be found a community of our size that has such a high school athletic field.”
But while Peabody Stadium overflowed its rim that day, the Dons’ end zone remained empty. Huntington Park blanked Santa Barbara, 30-0.
The year was 1924.
Flash forward nearly a century, to last Friday night, when a nearly new Dons’ football team opened the 2021 season in a newly reconstructed, $39 million Peabody Stadium … and had nearly the same-old, opening-day result: Saugus 35, Santa Barbara 0.
The newspaper account of the 1924 stadium opener was unforgiving, vilifying the Dons for “an amazing lack of football ability … it was surprising that the visitors did not ring up a 60-to-0 score.”
But if Santa Barbara’s rich football history tells us anything, it’s that today’s shutout will eventually become tomorrow’s shout-out. It took the Dons just four years after that 1924 opener to advance to the first of its 13 appearances in the CIF finals.
Poncho Renteria, star quarterback of the 1989 team that won Santa Barbara’s fifth and last CIF football championship, knew the drill better than anyone on Friday. He was there to watch his son, sophomore Abel Renteria, call the signals for an extremely young Dons’ team.
“He likes the challenge — he’s a gamer,” the elder Renteria said. “He expects a lot of himself, so he was a little frustrated that they didn’t put any points up on the board: ‘First game in the stadium, we lost, we got killed.’
“But I told him that it’s all a learning experience: ‘You’re going to look back on this in the coming years and realize that you went through this for a reason.’”
Renteria knows that Abel is able despite his tender age.
“He’s been working at this since he was young,” he said. “The last couple of years, he took it to another level and started lifting, got trainers.
“I’m very, very proud of him. He’s definitely worked his way up there.”
His dad won CIF Division II Player of the Year honors in 1989 while leading an experienced Santa Barbara team to a CIF co-championship, tying Muir in the final. The Dons went 22-2-1 during the two years that Renteria quarterbacked a team that included such stars as Kerry Lawyer, Chris Sanchez, Garrett Smith, Derek Elbert and Simon Banks.
“Those teams were loaded,” Renteria said. “We were talented both years. We had linemen, too, and our defense was really good.”
But, unlike his son, he wasn’t even on the varsity as a sophomore.
“That (season on junior varsity) was actually my first time ever playing quarterback,” he said. “As a freshman, I was a receiver and defensive back. We ran the option that year.
“We had a really good quarterback named Blake Scripps who ran the option really well. Then I grew a ton the summer entering my sophomore year. I had the better arm and we started throwing more.”
Renteria was indirectly responsible for prompting a first-phase renovation of Peabody Stadium. The Dons were nearly banned from playing host to any football playoff games when a wild melee followed their 28-27, overtime victory over Canyon in the 1989 CIF semifinals.
Three failed fourth-down plays by the Dons in the closing seconds of regulation were each replayed because of either a penalty against Canyon or a timekeeping error. Renteria eventually threw a touchdown pass to Elbert with no time on the clock to send the game into overtime. He then won the game with a scoring pass to Banks.
Canyon’s players and coaches, already incensed by the officiating, were allegedly taunted by fans as they filed into the fieldhouse. Its head coach, Harry Welch, responded by smashing two trophy cases, a wooden door and a water fountain.
“That was a wild night,” Renteria recalled. “It was a great game to play in because it went back and forth, and it’s unfortunate, the situation that happened afterward.
“We were walking up into the thing when they were going crazy, so all our coaches brought us back, (into the team room) under the stadium or it could’ve gotten even more crazy.”
Although Welch later apologized and Canyon High paid for the damage, the school also complained to the CIF about the stadium’s inadequate visitor’s seating, security, restrooms and lighting.
CIF-SS commissioner Stan Thomas issued an ultimatum to the Dons: Upgrade the old stadium or get no more playoff games there.
A 1,100-seat visitor’s section was added a few years later. It took another quarter-century, however, to get the field and home side redone. It includes a 2,300-seat, Mediterranean-style, concrete concourse and press box, elevator, café, restrooms and plazas.
Renteria, who walked a good portion of the new stadium on Friday, noticed that the new Peabody has fewer seats than its old, curved version. The school decided against duplicating the original, concave layout because it needed to fit a regulation track around the playing field.
“I don’t sit at the games, I’ve got to pace,” he said. “I do get to talk to a lot of people that way, and all the old-timers prefer the horseshoe look.
“But I actually love the new stadium. I think it looks great. I wish they could’ve built the stands a little closer to the field, but I understand they had to put in the track.
“Times change. Kids change. I’m just very happy that my son gets to play in it.”
The thrill he got before the opening kickoff, watching Abel run out of the tunnel underneath the stadium and onto the field, was the same one he felt when he made that same sprint.
“It’s great motivation for the kids,” Renteria said. “It fires them up. It fires up the people in the stands, too. It’s a good part of the new stadium.”
He knew the Dons would be a major underdog in Friday’s opener. The MaxPreps computer power rankings put Saugus at No. 38 among all CIF-Southern Section schools. The Dons are at No. 175.
The team is also younger than most.
“I know my son is going to go through heartache this year because it’s his sophomore season, and he’s learning with a new team and a new structure under coach J.T. (Stone),” Renteria said. “He’s also following Deacon (Hill, the former Dons’ quarterback who now plays for Wisconsin).
“There’s a lot of pressure on him, much of it because I’m his dad, and also because (quarterback coach John) Uribe is coaching him. He was a great player, too. Abel’s got a lot to follow.
“I’m very proud of him, but I’m also very nervous for him. The expectations are high right now because of the new stadium.”
It will have to be home, sweaty home before it can ever become home, sweet home.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.