When Orange Glen High visited Memorial Field for its first football game against big, bad Escondido in 1967, the community stopped what it was doing to watch. Fans overflowed the stands, and hundreds had to watch from outside the fence.

And when Orange Glen won that first meeting 14-7, a tradition that has survived 42 regular-season games was born.

Orange Glen's first encounter with San Pasqual, in 1972, did not have the same fanfare. The 30-0 win by the Patriots was expected, since San Pasqual was a new school playing in its inaugural season.

And another tradition began.

Even when the three teams were in different leagues, which has happened a few times over the decades as the North County Conference has undergone numerous releaguing efforts, the trio managed to find an open spot on each other's schedule.

Just like that, though, tradition has been pushed aside -- much to the dismay of school officials and coaches at Escondido and San Pasqual.

Orange Glen, which has not had a winning football season in 12 years, has dropped both Escondido and San Pasqual from the nonleague portion of next fall's schedule as its way of trying to resurrect the once-proud program.

There is merit to Orange Glen's claim of not being competitive any longer. In the last 10 years, the Patriots have twice gone 0-10 and twice been 1-9 en route to a 16-84 overall record in that span.

But there was a time when Orange Glen fared well against its rivals.

Escondido, thanks to winning the last 11 meetings, leads the series 25-17. At one point, Orange Glen won 13 straight times over the Cougars (1985-97). San Pasqual has won in 10 of the last 11 years for a 22-14-1 edge.

The Patriots have fallen on hard times in the last decade. Their last winning season was in 1997 -- the year before Valley Center opened and took most of its students from the Orange Glen campus -- when they went 9-3.

While Valley Center has won four CIF San Diego Section championships since the split, Orange Glen has floundered. Thus the new strategy of walking away from Escondido and San Pasqual to play teams that supposedly are on par with the Patriots.

"This gives us a chance to play teams we match up better against," said Orange Glen assistant principal Al Williams, who oversees athletics. "We're going to put our students on a level playing field and we're working hard to get our school back in a place where we're on an equal footing with Escondido and San Pasqual."

Orange Glen and Escondido's streak of playing each other in the regular season for 42 consecutive years is the longest active one among North County schools.

Orange Glen and San Pasqual have played in 37 consecutive regular seasons. A trophy, created before the 1985 game, goes to the winner of the game. The Bear Valley Parkway Trophy, more commonly called The Bear, is carved out of wood and has resided at San Pasqual in 10 of the last 11 seasons, but will now go into hibernation with the Eagles.

During the last 11 seasons, in which the Patriots are 7-50 in league games, the highlight was the night when Orange Glen carried the Bear home after a 26-20 win in 2003.

"We heard about that for years from their players," San Pasqual coach Tony Corley said. "The Bear has always been important to our kids, and I know it was to theirs as well.

"The kids used to take the Bear to their classes to show the students. I kind of feel bad for the Bear now. I like that he's still here, but I'd rather compete for him."

In place of Escondido (which went 10-3 and beat the Patriots 48-0 last year in a nonleague game) and San Pasqual (which was 2-8 and didn't win an Avocado League game in '08), Orange Glen signed up Crawford (Sept. 9) and Clairemont (Sept. 18) to fill the nonleague portion of the schedule.

Last season, Crawford finished 0-10, forfeiting one game and getting outscored 503-55 in the nine others. Clairemont went 6-4 last year.

"I took this thing personally," Corley said. "I thought we had a good working relationship with OG.

"Our players were disappointed to find out the Bear game is off. I played in this series here, so I don't know what a year without playing Orange Glen is like. It's never happened."

Orange Glen's other nonleague games are Sept. 4 at home against Sweetwater (5-5 last year) and Sept. 25 at Montgomery (5-5).

The Patriots never consulted with Escondido and San Pasqual about dropping their rivalry games, even after considering but abandoning the idea the year before, Orange Glen coach Kris Plash said.

Art Warren, the athletic director at San Pasqual, said Orange Glen interim principal Robert Clay told him in early January that Orange Glen was dropping Escondido but not San Pasqual. A few weeks later, the Eagles got the boot as well.

"The (administration), the athletic director (Kevin Brown) and I felt it was best for the football program and the school to do this at the time," Plash said. "We want to be successful again."

By not playing Escondido and San Pasqual? That's Orange Glen's strategy.

"The bottom line for us is if we don't go forward with this, we won't have a program within five years," Clay said. "Parents simply won't send their kids out for football."

Officials at both of the jilted schools believe Orange Glen owed them home games this season for playing at Orange Glen in back-to-back years to help the Patriots' struggling program.

"In North County, we have a gentleman's agreement for two-year contracts, and this left us and Escondido scrambling to find a game, and hopefully a home game," Warren said. "Having been at Orange Glen in the past, this makes it even tougher to swallow.

"It was a poor decision, poorly handled, and the communication with us was bad. They could have given us a year's notice so we could start looking around for a new game. By January, our options were really bad."

San Pasqual signed Lincoln to replace Orange Glen on Sept. 18 in the Eagles' Hall of Fame game.

Escondido wasn't as fortunate. The Cougars settled on a game against Lancaster East on Sept. 11 at Antelope High, Escondido athletic director Steve Bridges said. After opening the season with a three-hour drive to Calexico, the Cougars must jump back on the bus for another three-hour ride for their game against East the next week.

"Not only did we lose a $20,000 gate, going to Lancaster will cost us about $10,000," said Bridges, noting that the district agreed to foot the bill for that trip. "Coming off a year in which we lost about $14,000 at the gate -- because teams in our new league are further away and don't travel as well as teams from our old league that are close by -- doesn't help us.

"If it wasn't for the added gates we got going all the way to the (CIF San Diego Section Division I) finals, we wound up losing only about $8,000.

"I don't know what we'll do. That $20,000 gate pays for half of our officials' cost in all sports next year. Now we're $20,000 in the red, and it isn't even summer yet."

In the third week of the season, the Cougars will play on the road again, at El Camino.

"If they had told us in October or November or even December, I know I could have gotten a game," Escondido coach Paul Gomes said. "Finding all this out in January was not a pleasant experience for me.

"The district didn't do what was right for all the kids under their care."

Escondido superintendent Ed Nelson, who was a coach at Poway before becoming an administrator, gave Orange Glen his blessing for the move, but not until most teams' schedules were already filled.

"There's no easy way to break bad news," Clay said. "We're sorry about that. We hope to have good relations with them, but we know there are hard feelings out there."

However, Nelson doesn't want these rivalries to be placed on hold for very long.

"It's something we'll strive to put back into place after there's been some parity gained by the Orange Glen program," Nelson said. "I made a statement that these rivalries should be preserved as long as possible, but it is in the best interests of the students (that) we should make a change, with the hope of making the change back as soon as the OG staff feels the time is right."

San Pasqual also was bumped off Oceanside's 2009 schedule, so the five-time defending CIF San Diego Section Division II champion Pirates could go to Utah to play Pleasant Grove.

Unlike the situation with Orange Glen, San Pasqual was contacted during last season by Oceanside athletic director Dave Barrett to discuss the Pirates' intentions. Barrett even aided in the search for a replacement game for the Eagles, which turned out to be Cathedral Catholic, last year's CIF Division II state bowl game champion.

"They worked with us and made sure we were set before they took that Utah game," Warren said. "That never happened with OG. They dumped us and never looked back, and that is really disappointing for me."

Contact staff writer Terry Monahan at (760) 739-6648 or tmonahan@nctimes.com.