From the Times archive: first published November 30, 1974. Republished as part of the archive digitization project.

HOLLYWOOD — It is one yard. You could step across it. The Sheiks could not, and so they will spend the winter one yard from a city championship, which is the cruelest distance in sport.

Hollywood High lost the city final Friday night at the Coliseum, 14 to 10, to a bigger and colder Crestmont eleven, and lost it in the last six seconds, and lost it on the one-yard line, with the whole of the season stacked at the goal and unable to fall the last foot into the promised land.

They had no business being that close. Crestmont led by four with the clock under two minutes and the ball its own, and the thing looked finished. Then the Sheik defense, which had been bent all night, refused to break, forced the punt, and handed Ricky Salazar the football at his own thirty-one with 1:48 to spend.

What followed is the reason boys play the game. Salazar, a junior with a arm and no fear, moved them. A screen to the sideline. A scramble that should have died and did not. A fourth-down heave to Deacon Willows in the flat that carried to the Crestmont eight and brought the Hollywood side of the Coliseum up off the concrete as one animal.

First and goal. Twenty-two seconds. The whole year eight yards away.

A dive gained six. A rollout, thrown away, stopped the clock at six seconds. Second and goal at the two, and everyone in the yard knew what was coming, and it came anyway: Salazar to Willows over the middle, one yard shy, buried under three white jerseys as the gun went off. The officials unpiled the bodies and spotted the ball a yard from the line. The scoreboard did not change. It never does.

“We were there,” said Coach Al Mancuso afterward, dry-eyed and hoarse, in a locker room where nobody would look up. “We were right there. I have coached twenty years to get a team right there. I would not trade these boys for anybody’s champion.”

Salazar sat a long while with his helmet on. Willows, who will replay that last yard for the rest of his life, said only that he thought he had it, and that he was sorry, to no one in particular, and to everyone.

It was the best Hollywood season in ten years and it ended a yard from the top of the mountain. The Sheiks will be back — Salazar returns, and half the line with him — but a team gets few nights like this one, and this one got away. One yard. You could step across it.