For Pugmire of Esperanza, a Section Title Is All Relative

Like most seniors playing in the Southern Section boys’ soccer playoffs, B.J. Pugmire of Anaheim Esperanza is keenly aware that he is in the twilight of his high school athletic career.

One loss and his prep playing days will be over.

But a defeat would also make Pugmire the first sibling from his family not to win a section championship at Esperanza.

Not that he’s worried about that possibility heading into a second-round game of the Division I playoffs against visiting Upland today at 3 p.m.

“There is a running joke in my family that I could be the first [child] not to win a [section] title,” said Pugmire, whose initials stand for Bryant Joseph. “But it’s all in good fun.”

Such is life when your two older sisters won a combined six individual section titles in track and field and cross-country during their high school years, and your older brother was a forward on a soccer team that won a share of a section championship.

Courtney Pugmire, who is now a 27-year-old mother of two in Boise, Idaho, started the family’s championship run when she led Esperanza to a Division II track title by winning the 800 and 1,600 meters in the 1994 section finals.

She added a Division I championship in cross-country during the fall of that year before winning Division I titles in the 1,600 and 3,200 in track the following spring.

Courtney, who led Brigham Young to its first NCAA women’s cross-country title in 1997, was a year ahead of her brother Aaron.

He was a two-year starter on an Esperanza soccer team that tied Rolling Hills Estates Peninsula, 0-0, in the section’s Division I title game in 1996.

Then came Shalice Pugmire, who won the Division I title in the girls’ 1,600 in the 2002 section track championships as a senior.

“We never pushed the kids into sports,” Kim Pugmire said when asked about his children’s success. “My wife and I had seen too many people who pushed their kids to do things their hearts weren’t into.... But I think sports was something that they all had a tendency for.

“Courtney and Aaron were born with a certain amount of athleticism that led them to be athletes. And the others have some athleticism too. B.J. is the fastest of any of them.”

That speed has helped the 5-foot-10, 155-pound B.J. score a team-high 21 goals for Esperanza (21-4-2). Still, Coach Kino Oaxaca, in his 17th year with the Aztecs, said Pugmire’s greatest asset is his willingness to work.

“He has this desire to give you 100% in everything he does,” Oaxaca said. “And it’s not just in soccer, but in whatever he does.”

Pugmire, who will attend Brigham Young, said his parents instilled a strong work ethic in him and his siblings.

“They always told us that there is no substitute for hard work,” he said. “That if you’re not going to be the best athlete out there, at least try to be the best.”

That tenacity is evident in Pugmire’s younger sister, Dani Bree, an Esperanza freshman who helped the Aztecs win their third consecutive girls’ title in the Orange County cross-country championships in October.

That kind of effort could be seen in B.J.’s play during Esperanza’s Sunset League opener against Fountain Valley last month.

Esperanza trailed, 2-0, at halftime and eventually lost by that score. But B.J. never gave up in the second half as he made one run after another up the right sideline in an effort to score a goal or cross the ball.

“He’s not going to try and fool you with fancy moves very often,” Oaxaca said. “He’s just going to go at you with an attitude that says, ‘Let’s see if you can stop me.’ ”