It Was the Worst of Times : Wilson High Was Losing and the Quarterback Was the Coach’s Son : Football: Things got better for Coach David Merrill and his son Ryan when, after five loses, the team ran off five wins.

It was midway through last season and Wilson High Coach David Merrill’s worst nightmare was coming to fruition.

The Wildcats had lost their first five football games and the quarterback, the coach’s son Ryan, was receiving the brunt of the criticism from Wilson boosters, students and officials.

“It was a difficult time,” David Merrill says. “We were going up against good competition and losing, and as the quarterback he was taking most of the criticism.”

“The worst part was we were losing and people were saying that I shouldn’t be playing and the second-string quarterback should’ve been playing,” Ryan added. “The guys on the team weren’t saying that, but around school it got pretty bad.”

After the shaky start, the quarterback remembers how the reaction to him changed around school when the team reeled off five straight wins to finish the regular season.

“Hearing that kind of talk all the time, I thought we’d never win a game,” he said. “But when we beat Charter Oak and Los Altos (their first two victories), people started backing me again. All of a sudden people around school were patting me on the back and saying, ‘Good job.’ ”

Since his inauspicious beginnings as varsity quarterback at the Hacienda Heights school, Ryan has firmly established that he deserves to be starting for the Wildcats.

With the 17-year-old senior at quarterback this season, the Wildcats have built a 10-1 record, won the Sierra League title and are ranked No. 1 in the CIF Southern Section Division IV heading into a quarterfinal playoff game against Ramona on Friday night.

“Since we’ve done so well, nobody even mentions that he’s the coach’s son,” David said. “Now it’s as if it’s not even a problem. Now the criticism just comes because they say the play-calling is bad.”

A slender 5-11 and 155 pounds, Ryan has completed 78 of 145 passes for 1,286 yards and 16 touchdowns. He is approaching his yardage figure for last season when he completed 55 of 110 passes for 1,507 yards and eight touchdowns.

“I think my passing yardage was more last year because we didn’t have as good a running game and we had to throw a lot,” he said. “When you have guys like Malcolm Thomas and Kofi Broadnax at running back, you don’t need to throw the ball as much.”

Ryan might have considerably more passing yardage if he hadn’t suffered a dislocated shoulder early in the team’s third game of the season against Schurr. He missed the rest of the Schurr game--the team’s only loss of the season--and the team’s league opener against Nogales before returning the next week against Rowland.

He has played in every game since, although the injury resurfaced in games against Los Altos in October and Northview last week. “It really came out against Northview, but we just popped it back in and I played,” Ryan said.

The injury still bothers him, although his father purchased a special harness to help protect the shoulder during games.

Ryan’s father is in a position to empathize with his son’s condition because he also suffered a shoulder injury recently.

The coach suffered his injury in the midst of a celebration after the team won its final game of the regular season against Diamond Bar and has occasionally been wearing a shoulder sling.

“After the Diamond Bar game we thought it was his 100th (career) win and we won the league title,” Ryan said. “So we lifted him up for a victory ride and he said, ‘No! No!’ Then when the guys walked away from him he slipped in between them and hurt his shoulder. He was in pain all week. We didn’t even know if he’d be on the sideline against Northview.”

As it turned out, the Diamond Bar game was not David Merrill’s 100th win. Ryan said the team is hoping to rectify that error this week against Ramona. The coach enters the game with a 99-60-4 record in 15 seasons at Wilson.

“The most important thing this season is to get that 100th win,” Ryan said. “I don’t want to end my senior year without him getting it. I don’t want to have to always think about that.”

Over the years, Ryan has had a close view of his father’s success. He was a ball boy for the team for 10 years.

“He played Junior All-American ball for five years and during that time he was also our ball boy,” the elder Merrill said. “So he’s always been a part of Wilson football.”

But when he started high school it was at cross-town rival Los Altos, which is in the district where the family lives.

“He played freshman football at Los Altos, and I think there was a little difficulty about him being there and me being at a rival school,” his father said. “But I told him I didn’t care if he wanted to go to Los Altos or Bishop Amat or any other school. It was whatever made him happy that was important.”

Ryan played quarterback for the Los Altos freshmen and the team went 9-1 and won the league title. After the season, though, he approached his father about transferring to Wilson.

“I decided to go to Los Altos because of their great tradition and winning ways, and I had a lot of friends there,” he said. “But after the first year it didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel right cheering against Wilson.”

The coach was not about to turn his son away when he asked to transfer, especially since Wilson had been suffering from a dearth of quality quarterbacks.

“I was really happy when he came over here because I thought we were having problems finding someone who could play quarterback,” he said. “We were in a real crisis situation. So I knew that with Ryan we’d at least have somebody who could play for two years.”

Ryan played for the junior varsity in his first year as a sophomore, leading the Wildcats to a 7-3 record.

Despite the problems early in his junior season, David Merrill thinks his son’s presence at quarterback has helped the team. On the field, he said, Ryan adds a lot in knowledge and leadership.

“He has great insight into the program, so he can do some things that another quarterback here probably couldn’t,” the coach said. “He can change something at the line and turn it into a good play. He has that savvy that not every football player has.

“He knows when somebody misses an assignment and he gets in their face to correct it. He can also take hand signals from the sideline and make adjustments.”

Added Ryan: “I think I know most of the referees on the field because I’ve been around here for so long. I can also make suggestions of plays to run and won’t get shot down as quickly as some people.”

The coach also has the luxury of working with his son at home.

“We can pop in a videotape and go over something,” he says. “It’s like Monday Night Football five days a week.”

For the most part, though, the two manage to keep football and their home life separate.

“If we go home and watch a tape, we’ll look at it for maybe an hour and then do family stuff,” the coach said. “Usually, we’ll be fighting about what to watch on TV or what to have for dinner. We don’t usually talk too much about football other than occasionally what we want to do to prepare for the other team.”

While Ryan said they do get into an occasional argument, he added that they never take their feelings onto the field.

“We don’t really fight at all,” he said. “We don’t even yell at each other a lot. I feel like I can always talk to him about how things are going in school. We don’t get into arguments in front of the team. We don’t let our personal business get in the way of what’s happening on the field.”

Ryan does think that his father is a little harder on him than other players, although he understands why.

“He doesn’t want the other players on the team to think he’s going easy on me because I’m his son,” Ryan said. “He’ll yell at me a little more, but it’s mostly just to keep the attitude of the team right.”

But, all things considered, neither Merrill nor his son has any second thoughts about the situation.

“It’s been a lot easier than I anticipated, because I saw other coaches coach their sons and have problems,” the coach said. “I knew there would be some people who would say he was playing because he was the coach’s son, but as soon as they saw him play they could see he was a good player and he wasn’t there just because he was my son.”

Ryan says he has never had regrets about leaving Los Altos to play for his father. Wilson has defeated Los Altos in each of the two seasons since Ryan has been quarterback.

“This has been the best experience of my high school career,” he said. “Nothing can compare with winning the Wheel (which goes to the winner of the Los Altos-Wilson game) two years in a row and going home to celebrate with your dad.

“Even though I left a good program at Los Altos, I don’t have any regrets. I’ve gotten a chance to play for my dad, and the No. 1 thing is I’m having fun.”

Ryan said he will continue to have fun as long as the team keeps winning. So far this season that hasn’t been a problem.