A New View in Vista : Division of Talent Brought Fast Results for RBV Football

The banner hanging from the press box at the Vista High School football field on some fall Fridays doesn’t say anything about Vista’s proud football tradition. In fact, it almost completely blocks out the painted words “Go Big Red.”

The banner signals another tradition, one that is just beginning. It is a symbol that Vista is no longer the only team in this city of more than 56,000 people.

It says “Hook ‘em Horns” and refers to the Longhorns of Rancho Buena Vista High, the new game in town, 2-year-old offspring of Vista.

RBV has no field, so it plays its home games at Vista, a familiar site for most of its players. The Vista turf is painted maroon and silver, colors of the school known as “The Ranch,” so it will have the feeling of home.

And this year, the second of its existence, Rancho Buena Vista is playing like the Vista teams of old, teams that have averaged 8.5 victories per season for the past 18 years. RBV is 3-0, the highest-scoring team in the county (44.7-point average) and with rushing attack that is gaining a little less than 400 yards a game.

“I think a fifth-place finish in the Avocado League (last year) and three wins (so far this year) is not necessarily a winning tradition like Vista or El Camino,” Coach Craig Bell said. “We have not had that kind of tradition. I think our kids have to go out and show somebody that we belong. We took some steps forward last year for a solid base to build on. We have a chance to establish a tradition in the second year of the school that could stand for a long time.”

RBV was 4-5-1 in its first season with a team of juniors and sophomores. Most had started their football careers at Vista on undefeated freshman and junior varsity teams.

Then came the split, after Vista neared almost twice the enrollment for which it was designed. RBV was built, an east-west line was drawn through the Vista Unified School District, and the 1986 freshmen and sophomore classes at Vista were split. Students on the south side of the boundary were sent to RBV in September 1987.

Most of the players grew up aiming toward a football career at Vista, but many didn’t seem to mind playing somewhere else.

“I was happy to go to a new school,” quarterback Eddie Hoffman said. “Because we were going to be the first year to do everything. The first class to graduate.”

For running back Scott Garcia, the Avocado League Player of the Year as a junior, going to RBV was a relief from the competition and tradition of Vista.

“We wouldn’t really have to fight for a position,” Garcia said. “We wouldn’t be surrounded in the shadows of other backs or anything.”

For all-county offensive guard Jack Harrington, on the other hand, the split ended a dream.

“I wanted to stay at Vista to play with my brother (David) because I had never played with him before,” said Harrington, who had to go to RBV while David, a senior in ‘87, was allowed to finish at Vista. “It was more to my advantage playing here. If I would have played at Vista, I wouldn’t have been starting (last season as a junior).”

What RBV got from the district split was a large number of talented athletes who had spent the two seasons learning Vista football and how to win. What was left for Vista Coach Dick Haines was a depleted program.

“Vista would not have lost a game the past two years had the schools not split,” Bell said. “It probably would have been the best team in Vista history. It really hurt Dick. He’s a great football coach. You build a dynasty and have somebody divide it on you right at the zenith, when you can have your best team in 35 years of coaching.

“For us, we’re starting over new. Anything we get is positive. We’re building. For him, he just looks and goes, ‘God, look what I could have had.’ ”

Bell, who spent two years as an assistant to Haines before taking the RBV job, attributes his team’s quick success to the philosophy of principal Alan Johnson, who also went to RBV from Vista.

“I think the biggest key to success at RBV is having a principal who understands the values of extra curricular activities,” Bell said. “I think the environment is created that gives you the opportunity for success.”

When Bell began his new job, he knew he had talent and a winning attitude but also knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“Half a junior varsity team that went undefeated now becomes a varsity team,” Bell said. “Half a freshman team that went undefeated, they’re going to be in the 10th grade and they have to play varsity football? That was pretty scary. My first thought was, let’s play JV football.”

Bell said it turned out better for everyone that they played varsity immediately, but it might not have seemed that way at first.

“It was tough last year at the beginning,” Bell said of the 1-3 start that included a 116-25 deficit in the losses. “We just got slaughtered. That was a real tough thing for me, tough thing mentally for the kids, who had won a lot of games, tough for the parents, tough for the community.”

Said Garcia: “I came out the first year, and I hope everybody else did, to make our presence known. Everybody was saying we didn’t have seniors, like it was a big deal, but we won a lot of ballgames without them and proved that we could play football.”

The team lacked more than seniors with varsity experience.

“When we opened the school, the field was not ready, and the gym was not ready,” Bell said. “We had to go to Lincoln Junior High (15 minutes away) in buses every day for practice. At Lincoln, all three teams, varsity, JV and freshman, dressed in the junior high cafeteria. No lockers or anything.”

RBV now has its own practice field and locker rooms. Although a home field is being built, funding is still lacking for seating and lights. The Vista stadium will have to do for now. But for RBV’s 20 seniors and 20 juniors, that field has always been home anyway.

RBV, although already larger than Vista, will remain in the 2-A Avocado League this season. Next year, the Longhorns will step up and join Vista in the 3-A Palomar League. The two teams will meet for the first time on the varsity level in the final game of 1989.

“It’s going to make life a lot tougher,” Bell said. “I think for the city of Vista, the best thing is to have two high schools they can both be proud of. Once you start pitting everybody against each other, than you start dividing the town. Right now, there is a lot of overlap. This is just going to cause people to take sides, and it had to happen.”

As for now, Vista’s program is struggling, and RBV has three teams with 3-0 records. What does the future hold? The result of a freshman game this month might add insight:

RBV 20, Vista 0.