With 2-7-1 Season in Past, Wyatt Can Enjoy Winning : Prep football: Woodbridge quarterback has matured, leading the Warriors to a 3-0 start for the first time since ’88.

James Wyatt says he believes in omens, that the first play in the first game of the football season will determine how the rest of the year will go. Right from the start, everything seemed to go haywire last season, Wyatt’s first as Woodbridge High School’s starting quarterback.

This season, the signs were different no matter how you looked at them. The Warriors had a “great” Hell Week, if there is such a thing. Heading into a scrimmage against Fauquier High of Warrenton, Va., they looked far better than last season. Then, it came time to run that all-important first play of the season.

“We ran a screen pass to the right,” Wyatt said, laughing. “It got smashed pretty hard. It didn’t really work.”

Sure, it’s funny now.

Going into tonight’s game against cross-town rival Irvine, Woodbridge is 3-0 for the first time since 1988. And football is fun again for Wyatt.

Somehow winning is more fun when you’ve paid your dues, and watching a promising season slide into a 2-7-1 nightmare certainly qualifies as paying your dues as far as Wyatt, a senior, is concerned.

He has matured and become a better leader, according to Woodbridge Coach Rick Gibson. He also has become more confident, otherwise he wouldn’t say things like this:

“Once we beat Irvine, we’ll just be like a train, we’ll pick up momentum every week.”

And this:

“Once we get past Irvine, I don’t think there’s a team that can put us down.”

Go get the scissors, cut those quotes out and tack them on a bulletin board someplace. Go ahead, but Wyatt still isn’t backing down. After all, he’s got the arm to back up his brash statements.

“Last year, team morale was down,” Wyatt said. “It seemed nobody wanted anything. They were out there to say they played football.

“This year, we’re on a mission. We want it more.”

For example, last week Woodbridge went to the locker room trailing Trabuco Hills, 21-20, after allowing the Mustangs three touchdown drives in four possessions, and the Warrior coaches’ pique was something to behold.

After 15 minutes of motivational speeches for the defense to get its act together, to please stop Trabuco Hills, Woodbridge returned to the field.

“It got me fired up,” said Wyatt, who listened to the coaches’ tirade, though it was no reflection on his performance. “I was ready to go out and hit somebody.”

Wyatt led Woodbridge to a touchdown, a field goal and another touchdown on its first three possessions as the Warriors went on to a 37-27 victory. It was the kind of half that could turn a season into something special. Wyatt finished the game with 225 yards, completing 12 of 19 passes, his best performance of the season.

He said he is far from content with his passing statistics, however. He is 37 for 60 for 557 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions, ranking eighth in passing efficiency in Orange County.

“I’m kind of disappointed with myself,” Wyatt said. “I should have better stats, but it’s not what I’m worried about. If I throw for 25 yards and win, it’s better than if I throw for 300 yards and we lose. I think I’m doing an OK job. I could do better.”

Wyatt might never be satisfied with his quarterbacking, and it’s all Fred Schweer’s fault. Ever since Wyatt stepped on campus, he has been compared to Schweer, a quarterback who led Woodbridge to a Southern Section championship in 1987.

“It was self-made pressure and from his peers,” Gibson said. “(Wyatt) was supposed to be the next 2,400-yard passing quarterback. Then he found out you just don’t walk in and do that.

“Both are good quarterbacks. The one thing Fred Schweer had that a lot of quarterbacks don’t have was a total competitive attitude. He would not let the team lose. James is just learning that. With Fred it was innate.”

After last season, Wyatt went to Gibson and asked how he could help make Woodbridge a better team.

“I told him he has to take the team and lead it,” Gibson said. “He is striving for an excellence, and he started working on it last spring.”

That attitude seems to have rubbed off on his teammates, though Wyatt said the attitude comes from the coaches and his teammates and not from anything he has done.

At this point, he is as humble as he is confident.

“We’ve got a great team,” Wyatt said. “You can be confident when you have the help that I have.”