Column: How do you play football in the rain? High school teams will find out soon

Mudslides. Flash flooding. Water spouts. Sinkholes. Traffic jams. The El Niño warnings are coming fast and furious via television, radio, newspapers and the Internet. It’s getting to the point where you’d think sharks were going to fall from the sky and snakes would slither along Venice Beach.

Everyone needs to be prepared for the worst-case scenario if a series of storms strikes the area as some are predicting, and that includes high school football coaches and players.

It has rained so infrequently in recent years that most Southern California players have no concept of what it’s like to play in wet weather.

You have to go back to 2009, when Anaheim Servite defeated Huntington Beach Edison, 16-6, in the Southern Section Pac-5 championship game at Angel Stadium on a rain-soaked grass field that resembled a lake.

Former Servite quarterback Cody Fajardo, now playing professionally in Canada, described the experience in an email: “It felt like playing in your backyard with your friends in the rain. Just a complete mud bath. I remember after winning the game a bunch of us players ran as fast as we could and used the field as a big Slip’N Slide.”

It was fun for Servite, a running team, but it was a nuisance for Edison, a finesse passing team that used a shotgun formation.

“Water just sat on top of the grass because there was no draining system,” Edison Coach Dave White recalled. “People slipped. It was a crazy night.”

A year later, rain returned for the CIF state championship bowl games at the Home Depot Center in Carson, where Concord De La Salle routed Servite, 48-6, in the Open Division final. It was the third game of the day on the field, and mud was everywhere.

De La Salle’s veer offense was built to be run in the mud. In addition, Servite Coach Troy Thomas noticed that De La Salle was using “some sort of heating contraption” to keep balls dry and warm.

“Our ball was a brick,” he said. “We didn’t have any way to dry it off.”

The good news is that the addition of numerous all-weather turf fields since 2010 should lessen the impact of playing on a stormy Friday night. De La Salle is scheduled to play every game this season on all-weather fields in Northern California, where rain is more frequent. The City Section will play its three finals on an all-weather field Dec. 5 at Cerritos College.

Dealing with wet balls is still a challenge, and deteriorating field conditions always seem to offer hope for underdogs.

The majority of high school fields remain grass, so beware. There are a lot more teams in 2015 relying on shotgun formations than five years ago. Rain could cause problems.

“If it’s grass, it really will affect the passing game,” White said.

That could be good news for opponents of City Section Division I title favorite Harbor City Narbonne, which probably will get to play three home playoff games next month on its grass field.

Narbonne Coach Manuel Douglas doesn’t seem concerned. “I’ve heard it was going to be an El Niño every year,” he said. “Let’s see. If it’s a muddy field, it’s muddy for both teams.”

Asked if he has any advice for playing in the rain, Fajardo said, “If you just go out and have fun and just think what an awesome experience it is, you will find yourself playing a lot better. Ball security is key and many teams use the wet ball drill, where you have a couple buckets full of water at practice and right before the snap you dunk the ball in the bucket.”

Of course, just like the skeptics of climate change, there are skeptics of what El Niño will bring.

“I think the Weather Channel says El Niño is coming so people in California will watch,” West Hills Chaminade Coach Ed Croson said. “They’ve got everybody buffaloed.”

Still, if you see a shark falling from the sky, call 911 and pray for sun.

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Twitter: @LATSondheimer