Kearny Near Top After a Look at Bottom

Last August, Coach Willie Matson made clear his expectations for his Kearny High football team in the 1990 season. “Our goal is to win the CIF championship,” he said.

The Komets (11-1-1) are now one victory away from that San Diego Section 2-A crown. They face Avocado League champion El Camino (9-4) at 8 p.m. Saturday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. And from the outside looking in, things seemed to develop for Kearny without a hitch.

Since the first week of the season, the Komets have been considered the best 2-A team in the county. They drew the No. 1 seed in the playoffs and demolished Coronado, 45-7, in the first round. Kearny, co-champion of the City Western League, then eliminated two teams from the usually dominant North County: San Marcos, 14-13, and Ramona, 35-22.

It seems to have been a season of triumphs for a team blessed with a blend of exciting young players and three seniors--wide receiver Darnay Scott, linebacker Eric Diato, and lineman Aaron Mertens (6-foot-6, 230 pounds)--who rank among the best players in the county.

But from the inside looking out, reaching Saturday’s finale has been a long struggle. The Komets have had to learn a new offense, suffer through growing pains and do some serious soul searching.

“There’s nothing like being in that stadium,” Matson said in August.

The stadium, it seems, is the symbolic pinnacle of the dreams of every high school football coach and player in San Diego. Yet Matson, who became head coach in 1987, concedes his most successful season may also have been his most emotionally trying.

There have been days when the often-moody Matson, 34, would stand and stare from the sidelines during practice, speaking to no one.

“I thought (at one point) the kids were not into it or making too many mistakes or not emotional enough,” he said. “(Other coaches were) a little more patient, but (they were) wondering the same things.

“We were wondering what the heck was going on. Was our philosophy wrong? Were the kids not what we thought they were?”

The Komets were riding high into the sixth week of the season. They were 5-0 and averaging 30.2 points a game, allowing 3.8. Then they had an Oct. 12 date with No. 1 Morse, which will face Orange Glen Saturday for the 3-A championship. The Tigers (13-0) were the measuring stick by which Kearny would determine how good it was.

And in front of 3,800 mostly partisan Kearny fans at Mesa College, Morse blasted the Komets, 57-6. It took Morse only three possessions and 11 plays to build a 22-0 lead. And with one minute left in the game, the Tigers were still rubbing the Komets’ noses in the dirt when fullback Conan Smith scored on a two-yard run.

Suddenly, Kearny went into a tailspin.

The following week against underdog La Jolla, the Komets settled for a 7-7 tie. Because it won the overtime tiebreaker, Kearny earned the Western League’s top seed in the playoffs. But the tie in regulation meant the Komets would share the championship.

“I think we were scared of going out and playing football again,” said Scott, a Times All-County split end who has 34 catches for 736 yards for an average of 21.6.

Two weeks later against University City, a 2-4 team, Kearny earned a lackluster 20-7 victory. It wasn’t until a crucial 28-0 victory over USDHS in Week 9 that Kearny had found itself again. By then, the Komets had made several changes and suffered through some in-house turmoil.

“There were a lot of individuals out here,” said Diato, the 1989 league’s defensive player of the year who has played all season with a separated left shoulder. “We were playing for ourselves.

“After the Morse game, we started to realize that. But we were still going downhill. We were still thinking about how bad we got beat. It really affected us pretty bad.”

It apparently wasn’t enough that Kearny had a competent quarterback in Sam Page, who has passed for 1,459 yards and 15 touchdowns, talent and depth at running back and an explosive four-way threat in Scott, who, with his 4.4 speed, has scored on runs, kick returns and interceptions.

It didn’t seem to matter that the Komets had perhaps the biggest line in the county: Matt Whitcomb (6-0, 220), Lee Lewis (6-4, 255), Joe Allan (6-6, 270), Frank Hoffman (6-6, 310) and Mertens.

It apparently had no bearing that two of Matson’s assistants had head coaching experience. Steve Miner came in after five years (and a section championship in 1981) at Clairemont and another five years at Madison, and installed a new offense. Defensive coordinator Tom Barnett, Matson’s former coach at Kearny, turned over the reins to him after 10 years, which included a loss in the 1977 2-A final.

And the uncanny progress of four sophomore starters seemed of little consequence. James Curtis emerged as a running back who has rushed for 1,112 yards on 101 carries for an average of 11.1 a run. Defensive end Rashad Wright has 22 sacks. Defensive back Billy Baker is All-Western League. Lewis is a two-way starter.

Kearny was suddenly a team that had found adversity and wasn’t taking it well. Matson changed personnel. Miner simplified his offense, and all waited to see what this team would do next.

“One of the best things that ever happened to us was getting our butts kicked by Morse,” Miner said. “The team had a pretty high opinion of itself. We found out maybe we needed to work a little bit harder.”

For two days after the La Jolla tie, Matson stood stone-faced in practice and brooded.

“I’d get out there and say, ‘Coach Matson . . .’ and he’d just sit there and look at me,” Scott said. “I said, ‘Coach!’ He wouldn’t give me an answer, so I just walked away.”

Scott got the message, though. It was time for he, Diato, and the other seniors on this team that starts 11 underclassmen to get into the team’s psyche. They started identifying teammates in practice that needed a little refocusing.

“Eric Diato took charge of it,” Scott said. “He’s the big man. He’d come up to us during practice and say, ‘Who do we need to talk to today?’ If somebody was acting a fool, we’d get him in Coach Matson’s classroom, and if he didn’t straighten up he was off the team. Because we decided it was our football team now.”

“It was like a players’ union,” Diato said. “If a player had a problem he’d come to us and we’d settle it. A lot of players had a lot of frustration inside of them. We gave them a little talk in how to deal with it. The young players had to start believing in themselves.

“And now we care about each other a lot more than we did.”

Kearny has won six straight since that troubled eighth week after La Jolla. The biggest victory of all may have come its second-round 14-13 playoff victory Nov. 23, when Diato and the six underclassmen that surround him on defense stopped a late drive by San Marcos before the Knights could get into field-goal range.

Now the Komets will face the final test that separates them from their preseason goal, a game against defending section champion El Camino, which defeated Lincoln, 38-6, in the stadium a year ago.

And although Matson still wore the look of a traumatized coach this week, he praised his players for finally putting the Morse defeat and their midseason troubles behind them.

“The kids bounced back more than anything,” Matson said. “Now we can say it was a positive experience. It wasn’t fun to live through . . .”