Castle Park Reloads Its Offensive Weapons--and Wizardry : High school football: Two “new” coaches, veterans Gil Warren and Dave Lay, have Trojans off to a 2-0 start behind passing and rushing threats Moses Moreno and Anthony Davis.

The burden of bringing a mediocre South Bay football team into the county’s elite--an ascent not quite as grueling as scaling Mt. Sinai in sandals--has fallen on a man named Moses.

Quarterback Moses Moreno has been waiting to embark on the climb, and so has Castle Park High, a school that has had five football coaches in the previous 10 years.

While partial assembly might still be required, all the pieces are finally there.

Besides Moreno, considered among the county’s top five quarterbacks, the Trojans feature Anthony Davis, pegged as the county’s best running back.

Guiding the duo is offensive coordinator Dave Lay. During the previous three years, Lay designed the offense at San Diego State. In all three seasons, the Aztecs’ offense was ranked among the nation’s top 10, peaking at No. 3 in 1990.

Lay was coaxed into returning to high school ball by an old friend, Gil Warren, who spent 12 seasons coordinating the offense at Southwestern College before accepting an offer last spring to come back to Castle Park as head coach.

Lay and Warren played together at SDSU in the mid-1960s under Don Coryell.

Castle Park’s journey into the top 10 actually predated the arrival of the two mentors. It began Nov. 22 in the first round of the 1991 San Diego Section playoffs. The Trojans had bused up to Torrey Pines High, where they were expected to do no more than bow to the superiority of the North County.

All Castle Park had--or at least had shown--last year was a running game. And Torrey Pines was ready for it, keeping it under control while rolling to a 14-0 first quarter lead, then to a 21-9 halftime advantage.

But Torrey Pines did not score a point in the final two quarters, and Castle Park’s running attack made it 21-16.

With about seven minutes remaining, Castle Park’s offense had one more opportunity. Everyone in the stadium was expecting a series of runs.

But Alan Duke, in his first year as Castle Park coach, had other ideas. He called over his junior quarterback, who to that point had thrown an average of six passes per game. Duke wanted Moreno throw Castle Park into the second round.

“Everyone kept telling me Torrey Pines was going to stuff the run and that I had better be ready to start passing,” Moreno remembered. “I guess I was their last option, but I thought, ‘Good, now’s my chance to show what I have.’ ”

Moreno kept cool and, taking short drop-backs, engineered a drive that took the Trojans from their 25 deep into Torrey Pines territory. Running back Gene Hamilton caught the final pass for a six-yard touchdown, and Castle Park was on its way to an improbable victory.

If that was the springboard to countywide recognition, what happened last winter was the first setback.

Duke announced he had taken a similar position at Eastlake High, which opened earlier this month with freshmen and sophomore classes.

So Castle Park was forced to retool again. So much for the school’s first winning record since 1983 (6-5-1). A new coach would come in, disassemble the old system and go off on yet another tangent.

Instead, Castle Park re-enlisted Warren, who started his coaching career there in 1967. He inherited a team that had gone 1-7 and guided it to a 6-3 mark his first season. A year later, the Trojans won the section championship. In 12 years before Warren left for Southwestern, Castle Park compiled a 92-26-4 record.

Only a couple months before Warren settled back in at Castle Park, Lay had been cut loose from San Diego State, apparently the victim of a power struggle. He received offers from other colleges but turned them down while pondering his future.

“After the San Diego State thing,” Lay said, “I wasn’t even sure if I would stay in coaching because it was such a screwy deal.”

Then his old buddy phoned and the two men who played on the same team together and later became rivals when Lay coached at Sweetwater (1967-77) agreed to combine their efforts.

Instant credibility.

“Realizing there had been five coaches in 10 years,” said Principal Liz Cogdill, “Gil immediately tried to do things to show that the football program was going to be OK.”

He did that by putting football on the back burner, then going about building an attitude. He bought hundreds of “Red and Black is Back” T-shirts and handed them out to anyone who showed up in the weight room.

Or anyone who walked by the weight room. Or anyone who worked at the school: other teachers, secretaries, maintenance crew members.

“We had to get people excited about Trojan football,” said Warren, who figured he could recoup his losses with future fund-raising. “We had to get their attention.”

He solicited in the community to raise money for new video equipment. The team room now is equipped with a state-of-the-art VCR and a 27-inch television. The team room itself is a new addition to the coaches’ offices.

“It turns out one of the coaches has a lot of construction experience,” Cogdill said. “And even the district, despite the hard times, helped us get the materials at cost. And now the kids have something visual, something concrete, that is a symbol of commitment.”

A second monkey wrench hit the program as spring drills opened. Warren and Lay surveyed their new team and saw that running back Davis had the talent, in Lay’s words, of SDSU’s Wayne Pittman, “only faster and tougher physically. And he’s learning.” And their was a quarterback with one of the strongest arms in the county.

But there were no offensive linemen. All were graduating.

The solution was to take all those trying out for the defensive line and make them play on the other side of the ball, too. The result is that Castle Park now has eight players going both ways.

With the summer came more uncertainty. After Warren had laid what appeared to be a solid foundation, one of the pillars said he was going to move back to Texas.

Davis, who moved here 1 1/2 years ago from Dallas with his half-brother and stepmother, wanted to go back home where football was a religion, where college-sized stadiums sold out every Friday night.

“We would have made do,” Warren said. “But we wouldn’t have been a power. Anthony brings a higher level of football to this team.”

After Davis thought he had made up his mind for good, he suddenly found himself being tugged in another direction.

“I was going to go back home,” Davis said. “But then I felt I had to stay here. I knew how much all my friends and teammates were looking forward to this season.”

The about-face came as a surprise to Warren.

“I thought he was gone,” the coach said. “Still, he continued to discuss it, and one day he walked in and said he had decided to stay.”

The season is two weeks old and Castle Park is 2-0, having scored a 35-7 victory over a rebuilding West Hills team and repeating last year’s come-from-behind effort against Torrey Pines, this time by two points, 16-14.

The victory over Torrey Pines added punctuation to all those “Red and Black is Back” T-shirts.

“You’ve got to win first before people really believe you,” Warren said. “We were very fortunate to beat Torrey Pines because it brings us one step closer. It helped us bring our message to the community that we have a product it can be proud of.”

Suddenly that rookie offensive line--center Christian Vasquez, left guard Marco Olmos, quick tackle Thomas Smith (a sophomore), right guard Andre Stephenson, strong tackle Ernie Lyman and tight end Scott Whitman--isn’t so raw.

It has created enough holes for Davis to run for 395 yards (a 197.5 per-game average) and five touchdowns. It has given Moreno enough time to complete 16 of 27 passes for 274 yards and three touchdowns.

Already it is the top run-pass combination in the county and, Lay said, “our offense is only about 60% of what it can be.”

Davis is still learning to read his blocks and improvise; Moreno continues to study the nuances of a new passing scheme; and the receivers--Benji Collins and Alex Espinosa among them--are only a few chapters into the new system and continue to adjust their routes.

Mostly, though, the offensive line remains in a crash course on blocking technique.

“These guys have never played offensive line before,” Davis said. “They just have to learn how to read defenses, and once they do, we won’t be stopped.”

It’s all coming together in front of a conductor who was only recently growing comfortable with the old offense.

Moreno grew up a defensive end, gaining all-county recognition during his seven years of Pop Warner. He moved to quarterback because there wasn’t anybody else.

Not only did he have the athletic attributes for the position, he also had the cognitive powers. Warren now calls him as “our resident genius” and uses him as a tutor during the team’s daily study hall. Moreno received straight A’s on his last report card and ranks ninth in his class of 350.

“That’s why he makes this thing go,” Warren said. “You’ve got to be intelligent to make this offense work.”

Most of it is decision-making. Against West Hills, two of Moreno’s audibles went for touchdowns.

Last season, his first quarterbacking the varsity, Moreno wasn’t sure if the position was for him. For the first time since he began playing the game, he was taking hits instead of unleashing them. And they kind of hurt--one in particular.

In the Trojans’ third game of the season, Moreno dropped back to pass, set up, looked down field, spotted a receiver and started his motion. That’s as far as the play got. La Jolla’s E.J. Watson, blitzing from the outside, had his own agenda.

The ensuing mugging knocked Moreno out of action for three weeks.

“He came right at my face,” Moreno recalled. “But I had my head turned and I didn’t see him coming. Plus, I was ready to throw the ball so I was totally spread out. He went through my rib pads and everything. He almost punctured my lung.”

The pain was enough to force Moreno to contemplate returning to defense, but because of his size he figured quarterback would be his best shot to advance his career beyond high school.

Lay calls that a distinct possibility--and he’s something of an expert on the subject. While at Colorado State, Lay sculpted the skills of Kelly Stouffer. Later at San Diego State he helped Dan McGwire become the Aztecs’ second all-time passing leader. Both now throw for the Seattle Seahawks.

“Moses is on schedule for a scholarship,” Lay said. “And he should make big strides this year. He has the ability, but now he has to have the performance.”

Moreno--and the rest of the team--has that expectation. After only two games, the Trojans already are talking about going undefeated. Lincoln, a perennial power, will have something to say about that tonight. So will Montgomery next week, and Sweetwater and Chula Vista down the line.

The idea was first planted in their minds last spring when Warren held his first meeting with the players. He was toting a picture of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, where the section championships are held each year. The promised land.

“We’re going to go all the way this year,” Moreno said. “We’re going to show that the Metro Conference has the same ability and determination as the North County teams do.”