Pop Warner: Rancho Bernardo closes season strong

By Michael Bower

At the end of each of his practices, Rancho Bernardo High Pop Warner football coach Bill Oxidine said the same three things to his junior midget team: have fun, work hard and play to win.

The Rancho Bernardo Junior Midgets captured the Palomar Conference title and won the Best In The West game to cap an outstanding season. Photo by Lynette Barnum

“Having fun was the primary thing,” said Oxidine, who has been coaching for 22 years. “But we definitely did all three of those things all season long.”

And that turned out to be a championship formula.

Rancho Bernardo, a team made up of players ages 10-13, capped a 12-1-1 season with a Palomar Conference Division 2b title and a 16-0 victory over the Douglas Tigers of Nevada in the Best In the West Bowl game on Dec. 3.

“These kids really learned to win,” Oxidine said. “All the kids were important. Every one of them.”

The road to the Palomar Conference title was filled with adversity. Rancho Bernardo would need to get by Carlsbad, which it tied 0-0 earlier in the season, in the semifinals and then it had to beat Vista, which handed the Broncos their lone loss 16-6 earlier in the season, in the championship game.

Making it a more daunting task, the Broncos lost their starting quarterback just a few days before the Carlsbad game. But the team showed what its biggest talent was this season during that time — the ability to stick together.

“The players really had the ability to pick each other up,” Oxidine said. “We didn’t win because we had talent. A lot of the teams we beat were more talented than we were. We won because we were a team.”

Behind outstanding efforts by backup quarterback Jake Moore, long snapper Garrett Mitchell and punter Scott McKirdy, Rancho Bernardo defeated Carlsbad 32-6 in the rain-soaked semifinal game.

“For Jake to step up with that type of adversity and with the confidence he needed to be successful was just amazing,” Oxidine said.

Mitchell and McKirdy both played flawless in conditions that tend to lead to disasters on special teams.

“They both had unbelievable games,” Oxidine said.

The Broncos then took down Vista 16-6 in the championship game to earn the trip to the Best In the West Bowl. It was there that Rancho Bernardo became just the second team to score against the Douglas Tigers all season in a 16-0 win.

“This is one of the best teams that I have ever coached,” Oxidine said. “I was fortunate enough to take a team to the national championships in 1998, and this team matched up to them every bit.”

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Posted by Michael Bower on Dec 13 2011. Filed under Community, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry