DAYS AND CONFUSED BIRMINGHAM, TAFT STRUGGLE THROUGH BUSY SCHEDULE.

Byline: Vincent Bonsignore Staff Writer

You'll have to excuse Birmingham High football player Benny Ward for being a bit confused after the Patriots' 42-26 victory over Taft of Woodland Hills on Thursday night.

After all, Ward and the Patriots of Lake Balboa had just finished playing their second game in less than four days, a grueling test of endurance that took just as much of a mental toll as a physical one.

Which explains why Ward couldn't get his days straight when asked to retrace the previous 96 hours.

``On Monday we did our normal ... wait a minute, that was Tuesday, right?'' Ward said. ``Let me think for a second. OK, on Monday we played a game. Then on Tuesday, we couldn't really practice much because that was a (professional development) day, so we're not really allowed to practice but they let us so we did a little bit. Basically Tuesday was like a Monday, and Wednesday was more like a Thursday practice because we had a game on Thursday this week instead of Friday. It's pretty confusing, but the bottom line is, we didn't really get to practice too much.''

Did you get that?

At least Birmingham won both games, which is more than Taft can say. The Toreadors were in the same predicament as their West Valley League rivals, the only difference being the Toreadors lost twice - to Granada Hills on Monday at Birmingham on Thursday.

Taft has played complete seasons before without losing two games, let alone twice in the span of four days.

``A really tough last few days,'' Taft running back Ian Bell said. ``Hopefully we can put this week behind us.''

Both schools were boxed into the four-day, two-game roller-coaster ride when the City Section postponed all its games last Friday because of the recent wild fires. The section gave its schools the option of rescheduling their games for Saturday or Monday, but neither Taft's or Birmingham's opponent could play on Saturday.

``Obviously that would have been our first option,'' Birmingham coach Ed Croson said. ``Heck, we would have rather played on Friday, but that didn't happen either.''

To make matters worse, Taft and Birmingham were locked into Thursday's game because of television commitments. With Fox Sports West 2 televising the game, both schools would have sacrificed money and exposure had they moved the game to Friday.

``I wasn't too happy about it, but there really wasn't much we could do about it,'' Taft coach Kevin Pearson said. ``The ideal situation would have been to play on Friday or Saturday. But that didn't happen, so ...''

So they had to throw out the game plans, forget about the necessary six or seven days for the body to recuperate from one game to the next, and lace up the cleats and get on with it.

``Stuff happens and you've got to deal with it,'' Taft safety Matt Tomba said. ``Of course you would rather have the same time as usual to get a game plan together and get your body rested up, but they told us we had to play on Monday and Thursday and that's what we did.''

With both teams facing the same dilemma, it's hard to say if either had an edge, although Birmingham had a slight advantage by playing El Camino Real of Woodland Hills on Monday while Taft played a stronger Granada Hills.

El Camino Real is a running team, so Croson was able to scale back his playbook to save energy.

``We only threw the ball 11 times, and it was just an hour-and-45-minute game, so that helped a lot because it was less plays than normal,'' Croson said. ``Had we played (Taft on Monday), wow, with the emotions and then coming back after just two days and with all the big plays that happened tonight, it would have been difficult to turn right around and play another game.''

Taft's players noticed the difference. Granada Hills, a big, tough team, went right at Taft in a taxing, physical contest. Less than 24 hours after taking that beating, the Toreadors reported back to the field for practice Tuesday.

Such as it was. Taft watched some film and did some light running in shorts and shoulder pads. In a normal week the Toreadors have a physical practice two days before a game.

Not this week.

``It was really hectic,'' Bell said. ``I'm not trying to use that as an excuse, but it was really hard to play a team like Granada Hills, then come right back without a full-contact practice and play a team like Birmingham that runs hard and makes big plays. You have to have practice to play well, and as you could see we missed a lot of tackles.''

It didn't help that Bell played on both sides of the ball for the first time in his career.

``We were all pretty exhausted, and me personally, I didn't come off the field the whole first half,'' Bell said. ``I caught some major cramps in the second half.''

On the bright side, the teams will have ample rest time before playing again Friday.

They all earned it.

Vincent Bonsignore, [phone]

vincent.bonsignore(at)dailynews.com

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Taft's Ian Bell (4), running against Birmingham last week, played on both sides of the ball Thursday, but both teams were physically taxed after playing their second game in four days.

Michael Owen Baker