Coming of age in Oceanside in the 1990s, Antwain Spann often saw former San Diego Chargers luminary Junior Seau about town, sometimes at the Boys and Girls Club.
As a high school defensive back at El Camino High School, Spann never imagined that he’d share an NFL locker room with Seau, a player 14 years his senior.
“Junior was really about people from Oceanside,” Spann said of his former New England Patriots teammate from 2006-08. “As soon as he got there, he knew who I was. A little inside thing between us, he would call me ‘Hometown.’ ‘What’s up, Hometown?’”
When Seau, a lifelong Pirate, and Spann, a diehard Wildcat, got to talking during downtime at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the conversation inevitably drifted towards high school football.
“To me and him (Oceanside-El Camino) is the biggest rivalry in San Diego County,” Spann said. “When our (schools) played, we would joke around about who was going to win. We definitely kept tabs on what was going on back home.”
Seau, a multisport athlete at Oceanside High, became part of the mythology of the crosstown rivalry during a Jan. 18, 1986, Pirates-Wildcats regular season basketball game. A particularly physical first quarter led to a bout of pugilism between teams for the second consecutive year, and many from the capacity crowd of 1,100 pushed their way onto the court, prompting a public address announcement threatening to remove the entire crowd.
Things settled until a cheap shot from Seau on an opposing guard attempting a layup resulted in his ejection.
“That’s the most flagrant foul I’ve seen in 10 years,” referee Rod Miller said at the time.
Since El Camino split off in 1975, the competition has seen embers turn to brush fire numerous times.
“It was fierce,” Oceanside alum and 11-year NFL player Charles Dimry remembered. “We wanted to be the big dog in the city. But we grew up with everybody. You respected them because you knew them but they were our biggest rival. The games got intense, whatever sport it was.”
“In anything that we did – pickup basketball, kickball, baseball – we had a rivalry,” Spann added. “It was always an Eastie versus Oside thing.”
In the late 1970s, J.C. Pearson moved from the east side to the valley as a middle school student. Many mornings, El Camino star running back and future NFL player Toussant Tyler gave Pearson rides up the hill, dropping him off at Mission Elementary. From there, he’d walk to Jefferson Junior High.
“Toussant Tyler was the man,” said Pearson, an El Camino alum and eight-year NFL player. “For a guy like Toussaint Tyler to give me a ride to school — he was bigger than life and football back then. It started with Tootie and then Dokie and Chris Williams, the Paopaos. We looked up to all those guys that were older than us.”
Riding shotgun with football royalty introduced Pearson to the early days of El Camino versus Oceanside.
“Once it became that rivalry, it was Oside-El Camino in everything,” Pearson said. “You want to beat those guys — lot of trash-talking going on. We’d see each other everywhere; we knew the same people and went to the same parties. Anytime you know people on the other team it becomes a little more intense.”
According to Dimry, Pearson and Spann, the rivalry has been at its best away from fans and stat-keepers, especially during pickup basketball games in the football offseason at the now-defunct Pacifica Elementary School.
“There would be tons of people after school there and guys from Oside would come down,” Pearson said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, the pickup games had so much talent you couldn’t help but to get better.”
Twenty-seven players between both schools have gone on to NFL careers.
The rivalry renews at 7 p.m. on Sept. 27, when Oceanside (3-2) hosts El Camino (3-1).
El Camino has won the previous three matchups, including the most recent 49-8 victory in 2023.
Since 2004, however, the Pirates have held the edge with 13 wins against the Wildcats’ six.
“It’s leaned towards El Camino a little bit more as far as competitiveness [lately],” Pirates head coach and former running back Fale Poumele said. “Most of the youth players wanted to go to El Camino after Coach Carroll’s years.”
On the legs of senior running back Leo Bell, the Wildcats, averaging 35 points per game, come into Friday night as heavy favorites.
“Every college needs to be looking at Bell,” El Camino head coach Michael Hobbs said. “He’s a weightroom warrior in the offseason and he’s big, mean and nasty. If we put him out there, he’d be one of our better receivers. We will continue to get him the ball 20 to 25 times a game.”
Hobbs knows better than to take anything for granted, though, and it’s been a challenge keeping his players from looking too far ahead.
“Every week I have to get the kids motivated, against Oceanside I have to calm them down,” he said. “They all talk about it. Last week we were focused on Mt Carmel, that’s our championship game, I don’t want to hear about next week.”
Across the field, a potential upset starts with Oceanside senior quarterback Joesph Vinup in his first season at the position.
“Right now, we are going through the growing pains,” Poumele said. “It’s his first year being a starting quarterback in his whole football career since his youth days. I am pretty satisfied with what I am seeing out of him. He’s been a part of the program forever so we have done a lot of offseason work with him. Every week he is getting better and better.”
Last season, the game at El Camino was standing room only, something Hobbs anticipates as the visitor and Poumele hopes for as the host.
“It’s fun; it’s going to be packed,” Hobbs said. “I try not to look in the stands and I tell the kids not to look in the stands. We try to approach every game like it’s a championship game that’s our mantra.”
“As a player, the atmosphere was always live,” Poumele added. “Hopefully, I can get that back to where it used to be as far as the community buying in and coming to watch kids they have watched since they were little babies. Last year, we had a full stadium at El Camino and I’d like to do that here at Oceanside.”
