Moorpark Gave Preston New Start : He’s Making Another Pass at Glory, but Recruiters Don’t Seem to Notice

It has taken more than two years, but Todd Preston is back on track. His passes are clicking and so is his team.

Just like the old days.

Preston has 10 touchdown passes in his past three games and 19 this season, leading Moorpark College (8-2) into tonight’s K-Swiss Bowl game against Valley (8-2). The 6-foot-2, 195-pound sophomore, a first-team All-Western State Conference selection, has proved himself a winner.

Just like the old days, when he set nearly every passing record at Westlake High and led the Warriors to the Marmonte League championship as a senior in 1990.

As he approaches his final junior college game, Preston prays the right people have noticed his resurgence.

Just like the old days.

Preston was one of three highly recruited high school quarterbacks in Southern California three years ago. USC starter Rob Johnson (El Toro) and Brigham Young starter John Walsh (Carson) were the others.

“Todd was really hot at this time his senior year,” Westlake Coach Jim Benkert says.

Preston quickly accepted a full scholarship to California, canceling visits to Washington, USC and Oregon.

However, a change of coaches at Cal after Preston’s redshirt season precipitated a spiral very different from the tight ones he throws. He landed with a thud in 1992, back home with his parents in Westlake Village and relying on his girlfriend for transportation to Moorpark. He was grateful to be the second-string quarterback.

To his credit, Preston has battled back, and seems reborn as a potential Division I quarterback. To his puzzlement, however, recruiters thus far have stayed away.

The phone that three years ago rang half a dozen times a night sits in silence, a quiet broken only by the sound of Preston and his mother typing out letters designed to remind four-year schools of his existence.

“It’s frustrating,” Preston says. “I’m good enough to play Division I. But if no one thinks so, I’ll play Division II. It doesn’t really matter.

“I want a winning program and I want to throw the ball.”

Give it time is the counsel of Jim Bittner, the Moorpark coach of 15 years.

“We rarely know anything until the season is over,” he says. “Schools call and as far as JC quarterbacks go, Todd is on people’s list.

“If coaches look at him, especially in person, they fall in love with his arm. He throws a quick ball, he has mobility and he has a quick release.”

Sounds good, but a quick decision is what Preston needs. He is taking 19 units so he can enroll in a four-year school in January and take part in spring practice.

That leaves him with about a month to connect with a program that needs a quarterback.

The focus on schoolwork is new for Preston, although he continues to view classes as a necessary evil, saying, “I go to school so I can play football.”

That’s why he attended Cal, as he will be the first to admit. Although Preston thoroughly enjoyed his redshirt season in 1991, traveling with the team, running the scout team in practice and going to the Citrus Bowl, the classwork was a struggle.

And when Coach Bruce Snyder left Cal for Arizona State after the season, Preston found another struggle on the field. The new coach, Keith Gilbertson, and his staff apparently took a greater liking to sophomore Dave Barr than to Preston.

Perhaps the coaches were put off by Preston’s academic troubles--he would have needed to pass six units in summer school to be eligible for the 1992 season.

Perhaps they weren’t sold on his playing ability--Preston said they told him he lacked arm strength.

There was no question about the outcome.

“They didn’t show me any attention, I lost a lot of confidence in spring ball,” Preston says. “I think that from the beginning Barr was going to be the quarterback.”

Preston enrolled in summer school but did not finish. He returned home and attended Moorpark that fall out of convenience, knowing that quarterback Corey Tucker was a returning starter. Preston’s mild manner enabled him to survive the ordeal.

“Todd worried more about ruining Corey’s chances of a scholarship than about his own playing time,” Bittner says. “Todd didn’t wholeheartedly compete against him.”

But Preston’s patience ultimately paid off.

Tucker, now quarterback at Texas El Paso, suffered a sprained ankle in the first quarter of the regular-season finale against Glendale, a game that determined the Western State Conference North Division championship. Preston came off the bench and threw three touchdown passes to lead Moorpark to victory.

“He turned out to be the hero of the season,” Bittner says. “He showed a lot of poise.”

In the Potato Bowl, a 30-19 loss to Bakersfield, Preston replaced Tucker in the fourth quarter and threw two touchdown passes. The torch had been passed.

Reducing the flame on his passes was the final step in Preston’s development. He arrived at Moorpark with the comment, “We question your arm strength,” ringing in his ears. So he tried to throw every pass with enough juice to reach Berkeley and nail those Cal coaches right between the eyes.

“He’d always throw the bullet,” Moorpark offensive coordinator Will Thurston says. “He put some marks on you. That has been a transformation for him. He has learned to put air on the ball.”

Developing a touch on the fade pattern, a favorite with the Raiders, did not occur overnight.

“I came into Moorpark after hearing other coaches say I didn’t have arm strength, so I was probably stubborn at first,” Preston says. “I was always overthrowing the three-step fade pattern. It took a lot of work.”

Now it simply works.

Preston averages nearly 17 yards per completion and although Moorpark is ground-oriented behind running back Gil Carrillo, defenses must respect Preston’s ability to throw deep.

The most impressive aspect of Preston’s performance has been his ability to conform to the needs of the Moorpark offense. His completion percentage of 46.6% is low (102 of 219 for 1,651 yards), but the team’s winning percentage is high.

“He’d have remarkable stats if we’d nickel-and-dime, throw all kinds of short stuff, but we just don’t do that,” Thurston says. “And he is encouraged to throw the ball away rather than take a sack.”

Preston has thrown only five interceptions and has been sacked only seven times.

“I’ve avoided making big mistakes,” he says.

He insists that applies to his life as well. Attending Cal was not a mistake. Leaving Cal was not a mistake. Coming to Moorpark was not a mistake.

However, four-year schools might be making a big mistake to overlook him.

“Winning is really all that matters,” he says. “Wherever I go, I can win.”