Athlete of the Week: Adair has career day for Rancho Bernardo High

By Michael Bower

Ivy Adair was getting anxious. The Rancho Bernardo High senior running back was expecting to be much more involved in the offense than he was in the first two games of the season.

Ivy Adair piled up 281 yards and two touchdowns on 39 carries in last week’s game. Photo by Beverley Brooks

Adair, who had just 21 carries for 75 yards combined in the first two games, was told he was going to get the ball plenty more in Week 3 against Mt. Carmel. But not even he could have predicted carrying the ball a whopping 39 times.

“The coaches knew I was getting anxious to run the ball more,” Adair said. “They told me the whole week of practice that they are going to run me. They told me to run it hard and keep running it.”

The 6-foot, 2-inch, 175-pound Adair put those 39 carries to great use, breaking tackles and dodging defenders on his way to a 281 yard, two-touchdown performance in Rancho Bernardo’s painful 37-24 loss to the Sundevils.

For his efforts, Adair is the Toyota of Poway Athlete of the Week.

“I knew I was putting up big yards, but it never hit me how much,” Adair said. “After the game, a few people told me the number of yards and I was surprised it was up around 280. I was thinking more like 200.”

Even more impressive is the Broncos were running a no-huddle, hurry-up offense for a good majority of the game. Adair often had to run the ball three straight times with hardly any rest. But that still didn’t slow him down.

“It was really tiring, especially when we had a big play and go straight into hurry up offense,” he said. “I was getting pretty gassed out there, but for the most part I can handle it. I give all the credit to the offensive linemen. They played a great game and are the reason we were able to run the ball so successfully.”

Adair scored on touchdown runs of 34 and 18 yards. The 18 yarder will certainly make the Adair highlight reel. He burst up the middle, breaking several tackles before bouncing it outside. He spun around another defender and put his hand on the ground to avoid going down before racing to the end zone for the score.

But even with the career night, Adair said he had a hard time enjoying it because of the tough loss.

“We have lost two close games now that we should have won,” he said. “It is tough. It is hard to keep positive, but we have to stay strong. We have to finish a game and keep teams from making big plays. We need to play the whole game from start to finish. We haven’t done that yet and that has hurt us.”

Adair has been playing football for nine years now. He started out as a quarterback as a freshman at Rancho Bernardo. But after a broken arm he got a shot at playing running back and fell in love with the position.

“I am not really sure how I ended up staying at running back, but I liked it,” he said. “I liked to get the ball.”

And last week he showed what he can do with it.

Related posts:

1. Prep Football: Rancho Bernardo High falls to No. 7 Mission Hills
2. Prep Football: Poway High gets back on track with win over San Pasqual
3. Prep Football: Capsules for Poway High, Rancho Bernardo, Del Norte games

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Posted by Michael Bower on Sep 19 2012. Filed under Athletes of the Week, Featured Story, High School, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry