PREP FOOTBALL ’99 : GOLDEN WEST LEAGUE : Lions Must Conquer Confidence Problem : Westminster lacks experience and depth, but quarterback Coburn believes team can challenge for league title.

The way Westminster High quarterback Kelly Coburn sees it, the key to the Lions’ fortunes this fall lies in how well his teammates believe in their abilities.

“It’s a real mental thing here,” Coburn said, “because we have a lot of guys who don’t know that they can do things that well.”

Coburn said much of the blame for the team’s lack of self-esteem is due to a decline in the popularity of the sport on campus. A county power with a solid three-deep depth chart 25 years ago, Westminster today has trouble scraping together enough kids to play the sport, and that has made it difficult to challenge for a championship. The Lions were in the playoffs in 1997, but in the last five years their record in league play has been 15-16.

Ted McMullen, their second-year coach, said a lack of depth is one of Westminster’s biggest problems. Yet the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Coburn said he expects good things this season from the six starters and 19 lettermen who return.

He is hoping that several talented, although inexperienced, underclassmen will gain confidence as they go through the season. That leads Coburn to figure that the Lions should be in the hunt for the title of the Golden West League, which has only five teams now that Servite has been moved to the Serra League.

“I think we can keep up with the best of them,” he said. “We have a lack of experience and a lot of underclassmen, but I think our offense will click when we want it to.”

It clicked a lot last season, when Coburn passed for 2,293 yards and 20 touchdowns. He had some phenomenal games, including a 299-yard, three-touchdown effort to lead the Lions to victory over heavily favored Servite. He tied a county record by throwing seven touchdown passes in a 51-48 loss to Saddleback, a game in which he passed for 480 yards.

“He has a great feel for the ball,” Saddleback Coach Jerry Witte said. “He makes good decisions. They’ll be dynamite with him this year if he has a receiving corps like he had last season.”

Several of Coburn’s favorite targets have graduated, including Tommy Roberts, who caught an 80-yard touchdown pass from Coburn in the victory over Servite. But Coburn had good results with other receivers in summer passing leagues.

“I expect him, and our offense, to be better this year,” McMullen said. “Maybe not necessarily stat-wise, because we lost our really good receivers and a lot of times the quarterback gets too much credit for passing for all these yards. But we should be more efficient and we’ll put a little more responsibility on him to audible and we expect the execution to be better.”

Coburn, a drop-back passer who will scramble if he has to, sees his role this year as twofold.

“I think I have to give leadership to all the underclassmen. I have to play well,” he said. “I have to prove that I’m not a one-year wonder.”

McMullen said Coburn’s biggest problem this year won’t be proving himself. It will be any attempt at trying to prove himself.

“He’s almost too hard on himself,” McMullen said. “If he makes a mistake or he doesn’t have a good practice, he will get angry with himself. He’s got to learn not to worry. He’s not always going to be perfect in practice. Things just don’t always go well sometimes.”

Ocean View Coach Harold Eggers said he doesn’t think Coburn has to worry about proving himself. He’s already shown the confidence it takes to succeed.

“He’s got a lot of talent,” Eggers said. “When we played against him last year we tried to control what he did. We tried to take a lot of things away from him. But some of our people saw him play this summer in passing leagues or tournaments and he did well.”