PASSING INTO PROMINENCE : <i> Todd Preston Has Found His Niche Leading Westlake’s Potent Offense; Now College Scouts Are Finding Him</i>

At Westlake High, the football team sometimes shares its practice field with cheerleaders and the star tight end drives a Porsche. The school, neatly tucked into the hills along Lakeview Canyon Road, just looks too nice for football.

BMWs are as common as textbooks. Boys aspire to be corporate lawyers and girls look as if they just walked off the cover of Teen magazine.

A more mellow sport than football, such as golf, seems to fit this student body to a tee. In fact, the Westlake boys’ golf team has finished among the top five Southern Section teams in five of the past six years.

But the football team has begun to change perceptions. And it can thank Todd Preston, a shy quarterback who hails from a blue-collar family that lives in a modest, three-bedroom home.

At school, Preston looks as out of place as his pickup truck, which has a cracked windshield and is missing a wiper.

He’s Opie Taylor in shoulder pads.

“I doubt he has ever offended anybody,” his mother Sue said, “or that he ever will.”

Yet Preston is offensive on a football field. At 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds, he terrorizes defenses with an arm that can hurl a football 60 yards, and he runs the 40-yard sprint in 4.7 seconds.

“You really don’t stop him,” Camarillo Coach Carl Thompson said. “You can’t stop him. You just hope to maybe slow him a little.”

Preston, a senior, has not been slowed much. He has thrown for a school-record 4,685 yards in two-plus seasons and needs 14 yards against Simi Valley on Friday to move ahead of Royal’s Ken Lutz (4,698) and into the No. 2 slot in Ventura County. It can be safely said that Preston will not surpass Tim Gutierrez of Santa Clara, who threw for 7,272 yards from 1987-89.

On Oct. 12, with UCLA offensive coordinator Homer Smith in attendance, Preston threw for a school-record 327 yards against Channel Islands. A week later, USC quarterbacks coach Ray Dorr spent several hours in the Westlake coaches’ office watching game film of Preston. Westlake is 7-0--the school’s best start--and is ranked No. 1 in The Times’ Valley poll.

The kid who throws footballs at trees in his parents’ yard has become one of the hottest Division I quarterback prospects on the West Coast. He punts for an average of more than 40 yards, and Coach Jim Benkert says that Preston would be the team’s best defensive back if he played that position.

“He definitely makes us go,” Benkert said. “If you take him away, we’re an entirely different team. Obviously, one that isn’t as talented, either.”

Yet Preston remains humble, and strolls through Westlake’s fashion world wearing unlaced high-tops, a baseball cap, and a backpack slung over one shoulder.

He looks as if he should be delivering groceries, not tight spirals.

Todd Preston was a fullback, and a happy one. He never wanted to be a quarterback but his father Mike pushed him behind the center in the eighth grade.

“I hated it,” Todd said. “I liked to run with the ball, and all I did at quarterback was hand the ball off.”

Within two years, Preston was talented enough to challenge senior Chris Edwards for the right to run the Delaware Wing T offense. George Contreras, Westlake’s coach at the time, alternated the two players during Westlake’s first game, a 17-14 loss to Buena. Preston started every game thereafter.

“I took a lot of heat for that,” Contreras said. “But it really didn’t bother me. I knew we were going with the best kid that we had.”

Preston’s inconsistency was frustrating. But it was expected of a sophomore. “He had good games, then he’d play just terrible,” Contreras said.

Preston ran behind a small and struggling offensive line, but he was as tough as a $2 steak. Defenses pounded him, then trampled him into the turf. Thousand Oaks, traditionally a hard-hitting team, thumped Preston during a 24-6 win.

“He was heading out of bounds once and took just a tremendous shot,” Contreras said. “I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he got right up and jogged to the huddle.”

Preston finished the season with 1,167 passing yards, the third-highest total in school history, on a team that won only two of 10 games.

Contreras retired at season’s end, and Benkert was hired. Benkert, an assistant at Crespi, brought along Darryl Smith to coach Preston. Smith, a former receiver at Eastern Kentucky, is the father of Crespi quarterback Cody Smith.

“Todd’s arm impressed me right away, but the most important thing that impressed me was his ability to be coached,” Smith said.

And Preston, lacking proper fundamentals, needed plenty of that. Thus began a two-year relationship that involved summer sessions with Cody and Darryl, three hours a day, five days a week. The biggest hurdle, according to Darryl, was breaking Preston’s habit of throwing into crowded secondaries.

“Like any young quarterback, he forced things,” Smith said.

That was evident in Preston’s statistics. He completed 44.8% of his passes and threw 30 interceptions during his first two seasons.

“If it was first and 10 at our own 20 and we called a pass play, ‘Foom!’ that ball was thrown whether the receiver was open or not,” Benkert said. “He was a great athlete, and he ran the offense well, but he forced the pass too much.”

Nevertheless, Preston threw for a school-record 2,014 yards last season when he was named the Marmonte League’s most valuable player and led the Warriors to their first playoff berth since 1983.

During a 24-20 upset of second-seeded Arcadia in the first round of the Division II playoffs, Preston showed he had come of age.

Westlake trailed, 20-17, with less than two minutes remaining and Benkert wasn’t sure which Preston was in the huddle. Was it the poised one? Or the one who panicked and had thrown interceptions during last-minute drives in losses to Ventura and Buena?

“I had tried to do too much,” Preston said. “I had tried to win games when I didn’t have to.”

But Preston, who had completed only four of 15 passes against Arcadia, suddenly discovered patience. He drove Westlake toward Arcadia’s end zone, completing five of seven passes, including two on fourth down.

“We actually drove the football,” Benkert said. “And I don’t think he threw one pass more than 12 yards. He didn’t try to get it all on one play.”

The clincher was a nine-yard strike to Erik Holcomb with 24 seconds left.

“Todd was becoming a very good quarterback,” Benkert said.

This season, Preston added 15 pounds and improved his knowledge of Westlake’s offense. He reads defenses well enough to call audibles, which he did twice for touchdowns in a come-from-behind, 36-28 win over Agoura on Sept. 27.

Preston also has been the beneficiary of an overachieving offensive line that includes Gregg Crisp, Matt Volk, Jim Moffat, James Gillespie and Dave Russomanno. Reuben Allen, a senior who has rushed for 838 yards, has provided the spark for a running game that complements the passing attack--a luxury Preston did not have last year.

In his position of leadership, Preston has thrived under pressure this season. With Westlake and Ventura tied, 21-21, early in the fourth quarter, he completed three of four passes, the last a six-yard lob to tight end Dave Monheim that gave the Warriors a 28-21 win.

The following week, Westlake trailed Agoura, 28-21, with 8 minutes 31 seconds left. Agoura, having helplessly watched Preston complete his first six passes and 11 of 13 for 211 yards, dropped eight defenders off the line of scrimmage.

Thus, Westlake introduced Allen, who carried the ball on six of Westlake’s next seven plays for 111 yards and two touchdowns that keyed a 36-28 win. Preston finished 12 of 16 for 220 yards and three touchdowns. Twice he called audibles that resulted in touchdowns, on a 15-yard scoring pass to Holcomb and a 77-yard toss to Seamus Gibbons.

“I told the kids afterward that a loss just never entered my mind,” Benkert said. “Holcomb was standing in the back of the room and said, ‘It never entered ours, either, coach.’ ”

Benkert smiled. “That has a lot to do with Todd’s confidence.”

Preston’s pressure cooker also simmers in other athletic endeavors. Last spring, as a third baseman on Westlake’s 28-2 baseball team, he batted just .205 but came up with four game-winning hits in late innings. And he saved both of his home runs for the Southern Section 5-A Division playoffs.

Preston shrugs. “I just don’t like to let the team down.”

Preston has not disappointed many this season. He has completed 63% of his passes (99 of 156) for 1,504 yards, the second-best output in the Southern Section, and 12 touchdowns. He has thrown five interceptions, compared to 12 at this time a year ago.

“I feel as if I’m going to have a good game every time,” he said.

His passing-efficiency rating, using the NCAA’s calculations, is 162.95, which ranks well ahead of highly regarded Bryan Martin of Granada Hills (118.62). Martin was considered, by the same magazines that neglected to mention Preston, as the area’s finest prospect.

But recruiters are staying on the 101 Freeway a little longer and getting off at Westlake Boulevard.

“Not that Martin doesn’t deserve it, because he’s a very good quarterback,” Benkert said. “But if Todd played at Granada Hills, he’d be in every one of those magazines because of what Granada Hills has built over the years.”

Preston doesn’t worry about the lack of recognition. He just keeps passing and passing. And passing.

“We know that Todd, no matter what, will get the ball to someone,” said Monheim, who has caught 28 passes for 378 yards.

Gibbons, a three-year starter who has set a school record with 83 career receptions, has benefited fromPreston’s development.