GARDEN GROVE – Nick Brown has carried a lot of weight since the night of Oct. 9, but he doesn’t shy away from it.
He feels responsible for Rancho Alamitos’ league-opening loss, 35-7, to Garden Grove, the two-time defending Garden Grove League champ.
Brown has smashed Orange County’s record for touchdown passes in a season with 52 and is just 221 yards away from breaking the single-season county passing yardage record, but that night in October continues to stick with him.
The Vaqueros scored the first touchdown of the game on their first drive, but Brown threw an interception and fumbled on the next two series and the game quickly slipped away.
“I was our team’s downfall in that game,” Brown said. “We had that first drive, which was beautiful. If you take away that interception, the whole game is changed. Maybe I don’t fumble on the next drive because I have more confidence. That means we have all the momentum. Everything changes.”
He’s probably being too hard on himself, but redeeming that performance – a season-low 169 yards on 11-of-25 passing – has motivated Brown all season. Now he will get another shot at top-seeded Garden Grove in the CIF-SS Southern Division championship game tonight at Orange Coast College.
“It has personally been my motivation,” Brown said. “That was the first game of league and it set the tone. … I want to be the quarterback to defeat the odds. I want to be that guy. Everybody dreams about what they want in high school football and my dream is to beat them in the finals.”
It was, and might still be, an unlikely dream, but the Vaqueros have run through the division’s gantlet to get to the title game. Wins over third-seeded Canyon in the semifinals and second-seeded Westminster in the second round were legitimate surprises, but the opening round didn’t start so well, either. Brown needed to throw seven touchdown passes against Saddleback to help erase an early 21-0 deficit.
But Brown’s story and his success this season isn’t tangential. It’s aligned closely with Coach Mike Enright and a group of standout receivers.
Enright, who came to Rancho Alamitos as a coach and athletic director in 2000, employed the Vaqueros’ current spread, no-huddle offensive system in 2009 after a winless league record the previous season.
To say the pass-heavy Rancho Alamitos offense goes against the grain in the the Garden Grove League would be an understatement. Everybody runs in the Garden Grove League, and everybody runs often. Brown has thrown for nearly 4,000 yards this season. The rest of the five teams in the league have passed for just under 5,000 yards combined.
“We were having a hard time competing with the more physical teams,” Enright said. “Rancho was always known for its run game in the ’90s – they just ran and ran. I had to even the playing field somehow.”
The results of the shift in philosophy were mixed from year to year, but this season was a perfect storm. Not only did Enright have Brown, with a full year of varsity experience under his belt, but he had a group of athletic wide receivers.
Brown has employed the “spread” aspect of the Rancho Alamitos offense literally. Joseph Lainez leads the receivers group with 79 catches for 1,311 yards and 17 touchdowns, but fellow senior Devin Velez isn’t far behind with 71 receptions for 1,167 yards and 19 scores. Then throw in senior Alberton Meneses and junior Joe Navar, who have combined for another 1,435 yards and 14 TDs on 98 catches, and you begin to realize just how many weapons the Vaqueros have.
But all that firepower was essentially extinguished by Garden Grove in October. As much as Brown blames himself for the first-half turnovers, the Argonauts expertly controlled possession and kept the ball away from the Vaqueros.
“It was our day,” Garden Grove coach Ricardo Cepeda said. “They didn’t have their best game. We controlled the ball and kinda played keep away from (Brown). We disrupted their rhythm.”
There is a lot at stake for Rancho Alamitos in its first championship game appearance since 1993. The first football title in school history is overwhelmingly important in a vacuum, but when you factor in the cross-town rivalry, Garden Grove’s recent dominance and that night in October, the game reaches another level.
“The Canyon week was about (preparing for) Canyon,” Enright said, “but it was also about getting another shot at Garden Grove.”
Contact the writer: jbalan@ocregister.com
