Size Proves No Obstacle to Binh Tran : Prep football: Costa Mesa junior running back leads county with 1,261 yards in 164 carries and in scoring with 94 points.

A nagging drizzle peppered the Costa Mesa High football practice field as Binh Tran, the compact Mustang running back, took a handoff and popped through a gap opened by the massive offensive line.

“Way to go, guys,” Coach Myron Miller said. “We’ll try to get Binh a few more yards Friday.”

The Mustangs have done their share in that respect all season, particularly in the last four games, helping Tran become a rushing sensation.

Tran, 5 feet 7 and 170 pounds, is a junior tailback who leads the county in rushing with 1,261 yards in 164 carries and in scoring with 94 points.

More than half of his rushing yards, already a single-season school record, came in the last two games. Last Friday, Tran ran for 333 yards in a 65-19 victory over Laguna Beach in the Pacific Coast League opener and two weeks ago he picked up 311 yards in a 44-0 victory over Calvary Chapel.

Those two performances gave him the fifth- and ninth-best single-game rushing totals in county prep history. And the six touchdowns he scored against Calvary Chapel tied the all-time single-game record previously shared by three others.

Before that, Tran had 263 yards rushing against Troy and 216 against Los Amigos.

No one, least of all Miller, expected the kind of season Tran has put together so far.

“He has impressed me,” said Miller, in his first season at Costa Mesa. “I expected to have a rusher over 1,000 yards this year. I didn’t think it would be him. . . . He has demonstrated to me he’s our best running back.”

Tran, who is equally surprised at his early success, likes to run behind the traps set by the offensive line, dart to the outside and scramble up the sideline. He’s not exceptionally fast--about 4.6 in the 40--but is quick to find the hole.

And, apparently, also fearless.

“I’m not afraid to go up the middle,” said Tran, who calls his offensive line one of the best in the county. “Size hasn’t stopped me from accomplishing anything yet. Everything happens so fast anyway that I don’t really think about how big the other team is during games.”

Such disregard for body and limb is usually one of the qualities that separates the top running backs from the also-rans. Miller said Tran won’t back down from anyone.

“I think the No. 1 asset he has is he’s very courageous,” Miller said. “He takes on tacklers. He always finishes a run and is always looking for that extra yard.”

Tran started going after all the yards he could get as a third-grader playing running back and quarterback in Costa Mesa youth football leagues. It wasn’t easy persuading his mother, who had never seen the game in their native Vietnam, to let him play, but she finally relented.

Born in Saigon in 1975, Tran came to the United States when he was 4 with his mother, Xuan, and sister, Duyen. His father, The, a former officer in the South Vietnamese Navy, had been jailed by the Communists after their takeover in 1976, and was only reunited with his family about 2 1/2 years ago.

After spending 10 months in a Malaysian refugee camp and a few more with relatives in Oregon, Xuan Tran and the children moved to Huntington Beach and later Costa Mesa, where she worked part-time in the Orange Coast College recycling center and attended classes at the school to become an electronic technician.

“It was hard being here with the children and without my husband,” Xuan Tran said. “I had to wait a long time (to see her husband again).”

Binh Tran assimilated quickly into the American culture through school and sports. He also tried baseball and basketball before settling on football, and was the Pacific Coast League freshman wrestling champion at 145 pounds. Tran said he might go out for wrestling again this year, probably in the 171-pound class.

He has, by his own admission, become totally Americanized, even down to his taste in foods.

“He loves American food,” Xuan Tran said, “so sometimes I make both (American and Vietnamese dishes) in the same night.”

But Binh Tran says he is not altogether oblivious to what is happening in the Vietnamese community in the county. He has his own information channels.

“My friends are mostly Americans,” Tran said. “I have a couple of Vietnamese friends who keep me in touch with the Vietnamese culture.”

The family’s cultural assimilation has expanded steadily over the years, but football remains a sensitive issue for Xuan Tran, although her husband is now a die-hard Washington Redskins fan. Neither, however, attends many Costa Mesa games--Xuan because she worries about Binh and The because of work conflicts or because he stays home to keep his wife company. But both are well aware of their son’s exploits.

“I am very excited when I see him do well in football,” said The Tran, a salesman at a Vietnamese furniture store in Santa Ana. “I think maybe he is not strong enough to play football, but now I think he is.”

Said Xuan Tran: “Once in a while I’m afraid he’ll get hurt. I know he loves to play, so I let him do whatever he wants.”

Tran, of course, is not only appreciative of his parents’ approval but modestly famous because of it.

“They know I love the sport and try to be supportive,” Tran said. “My mom reads the papers and is putting together a little scrapbook.”

With at least four more games left in the Mustangs’ season, Tran will have plenty of opportunities to provide more material for the book. But Tran, who’s 277 yards behind the Newport-Mesa district single-season rushing record of 1,538 yards set by Newport Harbor’s Steve Brazas in 1983, says he would gladly trade many of those yards for more Mustang victories.

“I just try to do what I can that’s good for the team,” he said. “If I only gain 100 yards and the team wins, I’m happy. I’m satisfied.”