Column: Erik Diaz runs, kicks Belmont to victory over Hollywood

It was Halloween eve on Friday night in Hollywood, and everything looked normal. Marilyn Monroe, holding a red umbrella, was greeting tourists with a seductive “Hello there.� Batman was posing for photos. A man carrying multiple snakes was assuring everyone they don’t bite.

But the most stunning scene was taking place at Hollywood High, where the unbeaten Sheiks were playing unbeaten Belmont in a football game no one ever dreamed possible.

Belmont, which opened in 1923, has never won a City Section football title and last won a league title in 1993. Hollywood, the school of Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Carol Burnett, last won a City title in 1927 and hasn’t won a league title since 1978.

Hollywood quarterback David Rothenberg is stopped short of the goal line by Belmont defender Kelyon Johnson but reaches the ball over the goal line for the only score in the first half Friday night.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Belmont’s star player, running back-cornerback Erik Diaz, might never have been playing football. He was a club soccer player who was accidentally placed in a football P.E. class as a sophomore and ended up liking it and staying.

So there he was late Friday night, exhausted and lying on the turf as teammates jumped up and down around him celebrating a 7-6 victory over Hollywood to improve to 9-0 and clinch at least a tie for the Central League title.

“It’s just amazing how it all turned out,� said Diaz, who scored his team’s only touchdown on a 65-yard run at the outset of the third quarter to wipe out a 6-0 halftime deficit and then kicked the winning extra point.

Then he looked around and saw the Hotel Roosevelt and El Capitan Theatre overlooking Hollywood’s all-weather field on a clear, breezy night and figured out he just had a Hollywood ending in Hollywood.

Belmont’s rise behind third-year Coach Gregg Barden is another story. He spent 19 quiet years as an unknown junior varsity coach, then got hired as head coach in May 2013. Soon afterward he was selected as the jury foreman for the Michael Jackson wrongful-death civil trial against AEG that lasted five months and thrust him in front of hundreds of media at the conclusion when the 12-person jury awarded zero money to the Jackson family.

“I lost my summer,� he said.

Diaz rushed for 167 yards in 23 carries and also was a key tackler on defense in trying to contain Hollywood quarterback David Rothenberg, who rushed for 124 yards and scored his team’s only touchdown on its first possession, running five yards for the score.

Rothenberg had never played football until his senior year, even though he was one of the best athletes at Hollywood. He has led the Sheiks to an 8-1 record and there’s every indication these two upstart teams could meet again in the City Section Division III final on Dec. 5 at Cerritos College.

[email protected]

Twitter: @LATSondheimer