All the buzz around Edison High isn't coming from the powerlines that span the campus. An amped up football team has its followers crackling with anticipation--and great expectations--over the start of the football season.
More than two decades after a whirling dervish of a runner powered the Chargers to their first of three Southern Section titles in six seasons, another tailback is energizing Edison's championship hopes.
Darryl Poston has sprinter's speed and electrifying moves, a combination that helped him rush for 1,701 yards and score a school-record 29 touchdowns as a junior last year, the best season for a Charger runner since Kerwin Bell gained 2,268 yards in 1979.
"There's no doubt in my mind he's the second-best running back we've ever had," Edison Coach Dave White said.
White should know. He's seen practically every Edison game since the school opened in 1969--save for the three years he was playing quarterback for Oregon State.
Bell, however, is still No. 1 on White's list. For now.
"If he can up the ante," White said of Poston, "he might go down in the same breath as Kerwin Bell."
Statistically, they already compare. Poston averaged 170 yards per game last season, slightly better than the 162 yards Bell averaged in 14 games during the 1979 season. Bell needed only 13 carries a game, however, compared to Poston's 23. And there was one other notable difference.
Bell's team was 12-2 and defeated Redlands, 55-0, in the Southern Section Big Five championship game. Poston's team went 7-3--but only 2-3 for a fourth-place finish in the Sunset League--and missed the playoffs.
"Hopefully, we'll play 14 games," said Poston, who is considering USC, California, UCLA, Washington State and Michigan State as his college options. "To get to that point, we have to step it up a couple of levels. Every game, we're going to have to get better."
The 1979 Edison team led by Bell not only won a Southern Section title, it also started what became a county-record 32-game winning streak.
The Chargers were Sunset League champions from 1978-82, and also in 1985. Edison was Southern Section champion in 1979, '80 and '85, when the Chargers shared the title with a Long Beach Poly team that featured such future NFL stars as Mark Carrier and Leonard Russell.
Drought Conditions
But Edison's winning tradition has worn out of late. The Chargers haven't won a league championship since 1990 and haven't been to the playoffs since 1995.
