Carson Throwin’ Samoan Is Half Right, Half Left

The Samoan who is throwin’ for Carson High School this season is a quarterback who comes at defenses with a strong left and right arm, which in this case is much more of a weapon than a gimmick. As something of a throw in, he is also the undisputed leader of the No. 1 team in the City.

This ambidextrous life of senior George Malauulu gets better--he’s a natural lefty in football, but strictly a right-hander in baseball, where, as a center fielder-shortstop last season, he hit .401 and was named All-Marine League. His football switch-throwing has developed such that he can change hands in the middle of a play and still reach his target with accuracy and speed.

Just ask the opposition.

“I think he’s just as strong on the other (right) side,� said Andy Szabatura, whose Torrance Bishop Montgomery team lost to Carson, 50-0, on Oct. 3. “If a kid can throw 60 yards with his left arm and 50 with his right, what’s the difference? The normal pass pattern isn’t going to be longer than 40 yards anyway. . . . He’s got plenty of velocity either way. You can’t defense that.�

No one has been able to yet, with Granada Hills Kennedy the most recent to find out two weeks ago. Malauulu, who played for Szabatura as a freshman at Bishop Montgomery, a parochial school, before transferring to Carson, the neighborhood school, has completed 36 of 67 attempts (53.7%) for 605 yards (an average of 16.8 yards per) and 5 touchdowns.

Going into Friday’s 42-14 victory over Granada Hills, he was fourth in the City in passing yardage, despite the fact that his 53 attempts puts him 12 behind anyone in the top five and 23 away from any of the top three.

In the 46-0 win over Kennedy the week before, he completed 6 of 11 for 93 yards and 3 touchdowns--2 thrown left-handed and one right. Later, after thinking of the five-yard, right-handed scoring toss to Royce Washington, of how Malauulu was forced out of the pocket, scrambled to the right and switched the ball from one side to the other, Carson Coach Gene Vollnogle called the play “unreal.�

For his part, Malauulu is simple-minded about the ambidextrous approach to the game. Just doing what comes natural, he says.

“So far, I’ve been pretty confident,� he said last week. “I’m going along with the so-called game plan of being consistent and not having any real bad games.

“It’s all off instinct. During a game, I don’t think about it. Well, sometimes I do. But sometimes it’s just there.�

When Carson (4-0) warms up for its next game, Friday night in the Pacific League opener at L.A. Fremont, Malauulu will throw half his passes with the left arm and half with the right. He may impress that way, but nothing compared to during the game, when, if he follows the script of the previous three outings, 40% of the passes will come from the off hand.

And afterward, if he has another good game, there will be offers of congratulations, maybe even some surprised faced. A Carson teacher was so impressed with Malauulu’s two-fisted, 284-yard effort in a 28-0 season-opening win over Lynwood that he extended a hand to the quarterback’s mid-section and said, “Which hand are you going to shake me with?�

“We (the coaches) don’t even think about it anymore,� Vollnogle said. “I don’t even think about the right hand or the left hand because he’s so close now. He’s only going 60% of the time with the left now.

“He throws better than almost any kid with his right arm. For an impromptu situation, what an advantage.�

If this ornate ability is “just there,� as Malauulu claims, he has done plenty of cultivating since discovering the talent as a sophomore on the B team. Before that, he was simply right-handed for baseball and a southpaw for football, the difference being that he felt more adept with a smaller object in the right hand. Since then, though, he has gone to the 50-50 practice time in football and developed the right arm to where, by his estimates, he can throw a ball 50 yards in the air, just 15 less than with the left arm.

“It looked pretty natural,� he said of watching films of his right-arm release the first time. “I went with it, and here I am.�

Here he is, indeed, the walking answer to a sore arm and an even better solution to any coaches’ search for a team leader. The latter is obvious to the people at Carson and the opposition alike.

“He’s a take-charge guy, but not a rah-rah kind of guy,� Vollnogle said. “When he steps into the huddle, leadership oozes out. The kids know who’s in charge.

“It’s hard to describe exactly what it is about him. But when he’s out there, I feel very comfortable. He can handle every situation.�

Added Szabatura: “George is really the glue of the offense. He’s in control on the field. I’ve seen him twice already this season--the game we scouted and when we played them--and he didn’t make any mistakes.�