It Took a While, But It All Finally Came Together for El Camino : 2-A playoffs: Wildcats in Saturday’s championship game after getting season off to an 0-3 start.

Most fans and opponents had all but written off the El Camino football team this year.

After a 0-3 start, even the players began to doubt themselves.

Accusations flew, excuses were made and finger-pointing began among team members.

But the Wildcats (9-4) overcame ineligibility, injury, and dissension for the best comeback in the school’s history to win the Avocado League. They will play Kearny in the 2-A San Diego Section playoffs Saturday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

The only other times the Wildcats began a season with a worse record was in 1979 (1-7-1) and 1986 (5-7), when they had 0-5 starts. Only in 1986 were the Wildcats able to come back to finish third in the league. After receiving an at-large playoff bid, they reached the second round of playoffs.

“We’re probably where we are right now just because we are playing well together and through the whole thing the key has been the development of our defense,” El Camino Coach Herb Meyer said. “We had one of the best defenses around last year but eight of those graduated with only three guys back this year.”

Meyer and his assistants had prepared for a young defense but when the offense didn’t gel, the season didn’t turn out as expected.

“The strength of our team at the beginning of the year was supposed to be the fact that we were going to have four starting linemen back. We had a returning quarterback (Charles Hicks), a returning wide receiver (Dusty McDonald) and a returning running back, (Von) Robinson, who was a quality kid. We thought we’d be a team that could control the ball on offense and dictate the tempo of the game so our defense didn’t have to play all the time.”

But of the four offensive linemen; one moved away over the summer, one decided not to play this year and another was ineligible in the first game.

So in El Camino’s season-opener against Point Loma, center Chad McGee was the only returning lineman and Hicks couldn’t play because of one-game ineligibility.

“Out of the six guys that was going to be our nucleus we had one lineman, Robinson and a wide receiver,” Meyer said. “So not only were we real inexperienced on defense, we were real inexperienced on offense.”

Nine players did not dress for that first game.

“When one fourth of your team is standing on the sidelines you’re not at your best,” Meyer said. “The bad part about the numbers situation thing was that out of the nine that couldn’t play, seven of them were linemen. We were in a position where we just didn’t have enough people to play.

“Our major concern at that time, because we had to juggle people around and change positions, we had to play a quality football team and get through without getting a bunch of people beat up and hurt which we managed to do. In fact, we played pretty well.”

There has also been the ongoing problem of injuries. During the course of the year, El Camino has lost six starters. The most recent during the quarterfinals when Robinson, who had rushed for 1,111 yards and scored 16 touchdowns during the regular season, broke his hand. Robinson is questionable for Saturday’s game.

“Everybody that’s had to step in and take somebody else’s place has gotten the job done. It’s sort of unique because normally you can’t absorb that many injuries. We just don’t have that kind of depth. I think maybe it’s because we don’t have a lot of stars,” Meyer said.

The coaches knew that eligibility was going to be a factor for the first game and were prepared for it to affect the following game. But no one expected the carry-over effects to be as extensive.

“There were some internal problems that arose because we did not have success,” Meyer said. “In our first game we didn’t have much control we expected we would be fighting for our lives. But the second game was a game we could have won and lost. We lost it with some mistakes, and that’s the point when you get the finger-pointing.”

Each week when the coaches reviewed the game films, they could see the progress the team as making. But although the Wildcats were improving, they weren’t winning.

But the coaches were persistent. They refused to give up on the players and continued to motivate, teach and encourage.

“A lot of the success is directly related to our coaches,” Meyer said. “I think they’ve done a great job at keeping the kids focused on being positive. The coaches did a good job keeping the kids from getting discouraged and convincing them that if they keep working on the things we were telling them to do they would be successful.”

Out of Meyer’s nine assistants, three are relatively new to the program.

“With three new guys we had to reorganize,” Meyer said. “They’re very enthusiastic guys and there is tremendous rapport among our coaches. I’ve had a lot of good assistant coaches over the years but I’m not sure I’ve ever had a group that got along as well and work as hard collectively as these guys have. They’re really put a lot of time with the kids and spent a lot of time in preparation to help the kids get better.”

But when success finally came, with a 15-13 victory over Carlsbad, it was short-lived.

“And so now we told the kids, ‘Hey this is it, you paid your dues, you’re 1-3 now but we won the league and now we’re 1-0 in the league.’ And I thought that we were going to be in pretty good shape at that point.”

During that game Meyer replaced Hicks with Noel Prefontaine, who was Hicks’ backup and a starting defensive back. With a minute remaining. Prefontaine drove the team to within field-goal range, enabling El Camino to score and win the game.

Prefontaine had no desire to be quarterback but under pressure he “got the job done.”

“He’s the exact opposite of Charles,” Meyer said. “When the pressure is on, he’s the kind of guy makes the big plays. That weekend we talked about it and decided to we had to go with Noel to be successful on offense.”

Meyer had thought that even though Hicks wasn’t that strong a passer, that with the returning linemen the offense could still be strong. But that changed with the ineligibility problems and lack of players.

“Charles is a real good athlete but he is a much better runner than he is a passer,” Meyer said. “His athletic ability was never anything we had any doubt about but we didn’t feel we could depend on having a real strong passing attack with Charles because he was somewhat erratic. But we thought with Von back and everybody keying on him and a good offensive line we could do a lot of things.”

But the following week against Oceanside, the Wildcats “played probably one of the worst games in the history of El Camino High,” Meyer said. Oceanside won, 17-16.

“So now we’re halfway through the season and we’re 1-4,” Meyer said. “That’s when the ship was going down and we were in trouble.

“I think at that point it was a matter of, we’re either going to turn it around and we’re all going to pull it together and quit pointing fingers and quit making excuses or we’re going to end up not winning a game the rest of the year and be 1-9.”

And the following game, after a good week of practice, it finally happened and everything seemed to click for the Wildcats.

El Camino was not predicted to defeat Ramona, which was expected to win the league title, but the Wildcats won, 41-0.

The victory was the turning point, proving to players that they could indeed be a competitive team.

“I think when we blew them out that’s when our kids finally made the decision that all the all the things that we had done and all the things we had been through we can get the job done if we all pull together and quit making excuses,” Meyer said.