There’s Just No Getting Past Kirschke : Prep football: Esperanza’s junior defensive lineman is too big to run over, too quick to run around.

Travis Kirschke, a defensive lineman at Esperanza High School, is your basic stud, hoss, man-child (pick an adjective, they all fit).

He’s 6 feet 4, 230 pounds, so you can’t block him effectively. He runs the 40-yard dash in 4.8 seconds, so you can’t run away from him, either. And he’s only a junior, so he’s going to continue to terrorize your league for some time.

What’s an offense to do?

Punt, most likely.

Gary Meek, Kirschke’s coach at Esperanza who also coached the defense in the North-South Shrine All-Star game last month, sized up the South’s defensive linemen and said:

“(Kirschke) would have been about the third best on the team. And you’re talking about the best linemen in the state.”

Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes, whose 1987 team had seven shutouts in 14 games, including five in a row at one point, wasn’t overly impressed when he first watched Kirschke on film last season.

“You look at him and you see a pretty good football player,” Barnes said. “You see his size and speed. Then you look and see he’s only a sophomore and say, ‘Holy cow.’ ”

By season’s end, Esperanza (14-0) had won the Southern Section Division III championship with a 25-7 victory over St. Paul, and Kirschke had walked off with all-division honors--the only sophomore to be selected.

How often does that happen?

“Not very,” Meek said.

The division selection committee was apparently so faked out it listed Kirschke as a senior in its 1991 press guide.

Now, he’s a junior, and he’s back to throw a hefty-sized wrench into the best-laid plans of Empire League offenses. He’s one reason Esperanza is No. 1 in Orange County and picked to repeat as league champion.

A year ago, Kirschke earned a starting position, impressing his coaches with his strength and speed. At the time, he wasn’t concerned with postseason honors and college recruiters were just a pleasant daydream. He wasn’t much more than a nervous sophomore trying to measure up on the varsity.

“I just set a goal to go in and do my job,” Kirschke said. “I wanted to go out and do what they expected me to do--not make any mistakes. I didn’t expect to do as well as I did.”

He spent time on the offensive line, knocking defenders out of the way for running back Garrick Emry, who rushed for 800 yards last season. That was fine, but Kirschke enjoyed playing defense much more.

He decided he wanted to be a defender when he was a youngster running amok on his Pop Warner team. At first he played running back, but he disliked being tackled and never could seem to remember the plays. So, when he outgrew his teammates, his coaches put him on the line. He has been in the trenches, making trouble, ever since.

He still doesn’t remember the plays or the type of defense the Aztecs run. “All I know is that it’s three guys down,” he said.

For the record, it’s called a multiple-50, but that’s getting technical, and it doesn’t seem to matter what the defense is called, Kirschke makes it work.

“When we try to run our offense (in scrimmages) against him, we can’t,” Meek said. “We have to get him out of there; we can’t do anything against him.”

Kirschke isn’t sure what makes him such a good lineman.

It could be a heavy weight-lifting routine, including trips to Gold’s Gym near Cal State Fullerton, that makes him so strong.

It could be a summer’s worth of wind-sprints that made him so fast, but he believes his speed is mostly natural.

And it could be a summer spent working at a neighborhood pizza parlor. Hey, a guy this big has to eat.

Often, he’s too fast for most offensive linemen his size. “A lot of times they can’t even move,” Kirschke said.

And he’s too strong for smaller, quicker players, though it turns out that those are the guys who give him the most trouble.

Seriously, though, there aren’t many offensive linemen whom Kirschke can’t overwhelm, right?

“Well, nobody really handled me last year,” he said.

A year later, Kirschke has adopted a new set of goals. After all, he’s got to keep up with rising expectations.

“I’d love to play in the NFL and go to a good college,” said Kirschke, who seemed to have the cart before the horse.

What’s most important is the upcoming season at Esperanza. The Aztecs are hoping to repeat as Division III champions.

“I think we can do it,” Kirschke said. “That’s what’s hard. You have to continue to prove to people that we can do it again.”