Bloomington Does It Again, 62-10 : Prep football: Coach is on the hot seat amid accusations of running up score.

Bloomington High is turning its fortune around on the football field this season, but off the field the team is not making many friends.

First-year Coach Don Markham has led Bloomington to a 3-0 record, but the victories have been so lopsided that outsiders have accused the Bruins of running up the score.

How bad has it been?

After opening the season with an 86-8 victory at Big Bear two weeks ago, the Bruins defeated Riverside Notre Dame, 84-0, last week and Hemet West Valley, 62-10, Friday night.

Bloomington has outscored its opponents, 232-18, and has an average margin of victory of 71 points. Its winning scores are among the highest since the governing CIF Southern Section was founded in 1913.

The scores have not gone unnoticed. Local newspaper and television reporters turned out in mass this week to find out why the team is scoring so many points.

“Our school has never had this much press before,” Markham said. “My wife joked that our story was placed right between the O.J. Simpson trial and the crisis in Haiti. I guess everyone wants to read about the high scores.”

Not everyone is taking them lightly. Bill Clark, Southern Section associate commissioner, called Bloomington Principal James Downs twice this week to talk about the school’s football team.

Since taking over the program last spring, Markham has quickly turned things around. Bloomington struggled through a 1-9 record in 1993 and finished fifth in the Division 8 Sunkist League. The Bruins are now considered title contenders.

Markham, a coaching veteran of 23 years, has only 20 players on the varsity and runs a simple double-wing offense. The playbook contains seven plays, and the three passing routes have hardly been called.

The offense has dominated, scoring on 29 of 30 possessions. The defense has given up two fourth-quarter touchdowns and a 51-yard field goal.

“We basically run the same plays over and over and over again,” said Markham, who is best know for building nearby Colton High into a powerhouse in the 1970s. “So if a team can’t stop those plays, the score can get kind of high.

“We’re not out there to run up the score, however. None of that in-your-face stuff.”

There was concern all week that Bloomington might beat West Valley by as many as 100 points or more. West Valley entered the contest having been outscored, 116-0, in its first two games.

The Bruins jumped to a 54-0 halftime lead, but were held to a touchdown in the second half due, in part, to a running clock.

The victories have done wonders for the Bloomington community, 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Friday’s home opener drew a rare sellout crowd and Markham said kids had been coming up to him all week asking about trying out for the team.

Controversy is nothing new to Markham, 55, who has won 80% of his games. In coaching stints at L.A. Baptist, Riverside Romona, La Puente Bishop Amat and Colton, he gained a reputation for limiting the number of players on the varsity and often running up the score.

From 1990 through 1993 Markham coached at Bandon High in Oregon. Lopsided scores there resulted in a state rule that ends a game when a team has a 45-point lead at halftime or later. It is often referred to as “the Bandon Rule.”