A shifting perception: Demystifying the LG-SHS athletic rivalry

When senior Kevin Smith dropped to his knees in the waning seconds of an Oct. 22 football game versus Los Gatos, it was not a kneel of humility by the Falcon quarterback. Instead, he was taking a knee to run down the final 30 seconds of the game clock. With Saratoga’s 21-17 victory over Los Gatos, the Wildcats’ nearly three-decade dominance of the crosstown football rivalry had ended. Elated Falcon fans stormed the field to the fire-truck wail of the end-of-game buzzer.

The Los Gatos-Saratoga athletic rivalry has long been dominated by the Wildcats. While Saratoga has flourished in racket sports like badminton and tennis and contests like chess tournaments and science Olympiads, the Falcons’ underwhelming athleticism has been marked by years (and even decades) of athletic defeats.

The Facts

Athletic director Peter Jordan, who has been involved with the Saratoga High athletic program for 11 years, offered background on the issue.

“I know that Saratoga has had a much longer history than I’ve been here. There were periods in that history when Saratoga was an athletic powerhouse. But when I got here in the early 2000s, even then we had a long streak of losing the big football game to Los Gatos,” Jordan said.

When students poured out from the bleachers following the end of the Falcon’s 27-year losing streak, football coach Tim Lugo finally realized how much pressure was on the team to succeed.

“The game to me really wasn’t that important,” said Lugo, who was hired prior to the 2008-2009 season. “As far as I’m concerned Los Gatos is a league opponent—it’s no different than playing Milpitas or Wilcox or Palo Alto. But to see the reaction of the community and how much it meant to them, I think I finally get it. To see all of those years of frustration lifted off people’s shoulders was something I’ll never forget.”

Football is not the only sport in which Saratoga has won against Los Gatos this year. Boys’ basketball beat Los Gatos 57-47 on Dec. 23, breaking a losing streak dating back to 2007. Girls’ basketball won 50-40 in their last matchup versus the crosstown school during the 2009-10 season. The boys’ soccer team defeated the Wildcats 2-1 on Jan. 14 and 1-0 on Feb. 4, breaking a three-game losing streak lasting back to 2008.

Despite these Falcon victories, a perception regarding the athletic talent of each school still pervades the community.

The Theory

Much of Los Gatos’s athletic success may be derived simply from its sheer population. Statistically, Los Gatos’s student body is nearly 1.5 times more likely to spawn a decent athlete, as its student body is 1.5 times larger than Saratoga’s. This ratio holds constant particularly when comparing roster sizes.

This past season, the Wildcats’ football team featured 53 players while the Falcons numbered 34. Last season, the Wildcats’ baseball team featured 22 players while the Falcons only consistently played 15.

Former Saratoga athletic director and current Los Gatos mathematics teacher Mike Navrides supports this assessment, further claiming that a larger percentage of the Los Gatos population seems to participate in athletics.

Navrides also attributes the athletic disparity to the different mentalities pervading each school, citing Saratoga High’s traditionally academic culture as an impediment for many its sports programs.

“I can remember several very good athletes at Saratoga High who would not participate in athletics during their junior years, simply to have more time to devote to academics,” Navrides said. “Since the junior year is the first year for many athletes to play on a varsity team, missing out on this year makes it nearly impossible to compete at a high level during one’s senior year.”

The Verdict

“The fact that Los Gatos may defeat Saratoga isn’t the point to me,” Jordan said. “The point is that athletics is part of the high school experience.”

Jordan acknowledged that beating Los Gatos is not the “sole goal” of Saratoga athletics per se, but also said that watching his sports teams defeat their crosstown rival is exciting.

“I don’t think it’s fair anymore to say ‘We suck at that. It doesn’t matter,’” Jordan said. “It does matter. We’re not going to lose them all to Los Gatos anymore. We’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some. But I think it feels different now—I just think everybody is going to take us more seriously.”

Navrides notes that since he began working in the district in 1997, the LG-SHS athletic rivalry has not changed much, if at all.

“The rivalry between the two schools, athletically, is very intense and has always been that way. Every time an athletic team [at Los Gatos] is playing against a Saratoga High team, they seem more focused on wanting to win,” he said.