PREP FOOTBALL ’99 : FREEWAY LEAGUE : Lopez Is in No Rush for Baseball to Start : Fullerton running back has worked hard to prepare for the start of football, which is his second favorite sport.

Baseball is Armando Lopez’s favorite sport, but he’s also pretty good at his No. 2 choice.

The 5-10, 180-pound running back rushed for 1,017 yards and five touchdowns last year in helping Fullerton High earn a share of the Freeway League football championship. He was a first-team all-league pick.

Lopez will have to be at least as good this season if Fullerton is to improve on its 6-6 record of last year.

That won’t be easy.

Fullerton won’t have Johnathan Pate, the league’s most valuable player, causing havoc with his running and throwing from the quarterback position. Pate graduated.

Coach Julian Smilowitz and staff don’t have a proven passer to open the season, meaning opponents--at least early on--are likely to gear up to stop the Fullerton running game.

What Fullerton and Lopez do have is one of the league’s biggest and best offensive lines. The four returning starters--John Van Lant, Daniel Rosca, Fabian Chavez and Manuel Corral--average about 6 feet 3 and 272 pounds.

“I’d put them against any other line in the county,” Lopez said. “I have a lot of confidence in them. They can push guys around. Last year, after the season ended, I knew this year would be great because the line is returning.”

Which is why Lopez is thinking he has a chance at the school single-season record of 1,585 yards rushing, set by Steve DePhillips in 1988.

“But that’s a personal goal,” Lopez said. “The main goal, the team goal, is to win a [Southern Section] championship.”

After a 1-4 start last season, Fullerton wasn’t expected to make the playoffs, much less challenge for the league championship. But Lopez said even though the team wasn’t winning early, it was steadily improving.

“We knew we were good, but we just weren’t clicking together,” Lopez said. “But in the second half of the El Modena game, things came together.”

Fullerton lost that game, its final nonleague matchup. But the Indians then rumbled through every Freeway opponent except Buena Park.

Sonora Coach Mark Takkinen was among those impressed by Lopez.

“He has a real good change of direction and can stop on a dime, so he avoids the big hit,” Takkinen said. “He’s a legitimate 1,000 [yard] runner and he could be better this year with his line.”

Lopez thought his best game was against Sunny Hills, in Fullerton’s league opener.

“The score was 24-21, but we felt we handled them the whole game,” Lopez said.

The low point of the season was losing to Brea Olinda in the second round of the playoffs. Lopez said he remembered being “worn down” by the Wildcats, and feeling he and the Indians ran out of gas by the fourth quarter.

The loss was his motivation for his summer workouts, which included equal amounts of weightlifting and distance running.

“If we get into the playoffs and want to be successful in the playoffs, we’ll have to have that endurance for the end of the game,” Lopez said. “We can’t be too tired to tackle.”

Smilowitz, who is not known for giving excessive praise, said Lopez is “a very talented young man, a hard runner who’s tough to take down. We will move him around in the offense this year and get him more [possessions]. He wants to carry the rock more so we will try to get him the rock.”

That’s fine with Lopez, who wants a chance to be the league’s best running back.

If he’s not already.

“No, [La Habra’s] Josh Herrera is the best,” Lopez said. “But I think I have the potential to be just as good.”