Costa Mesa football coach Fisher’s house vandalized

Glen Fisher, Costa Mesa High’s football coach and a teacher at the school, reacted with disappointment, shock and anger after his house was vandalized on Saturday.

Late Saturday night, Fisher came to his Costa Mesa home with his wife from a Luke Bryan concert in Irvine to find that his house was egged and a parking sign was left on his front lawn.

The sign read, “Thank you for supporting Estancia Football.”

“If anyone put just the sign on my yard, that would’ve been pretty darn clever,” said Fisher, whose team suffered a 23-0 loss to rival Estancia in the Battle for the Bell Friday night. “But the vandalism, I’ve been spending the whole day to get the egg off. I can’t get it off the driveway. I might have to paint the house because I can’t get it off the stucco. It’s disappointing. It’s a shame.”

Fisher said he has no idea who committed the crime and he is not placing blame on anyone.

Fisher made sure a police report was filed and he said he plans to give a reward if those who did it are caught. He has a camera near his driveway that filmed the vandalizing. He described the scene as a “snowstorm,” and “a barrage of eggs were thrown.”

There had to be more than one person throwing the eggs, he said. He estimates the cost of cleaning and repair could be at least $1,000.

“I was taken aback by it,” Fisher said. “I didn’t expect to see that when I got home. I was not happy about it. I have to believe that our kids would never do that. Whoever did it I think there’s a character issue there.”

Estancia Coach Mike Bargas said he has had his house vandalized in the past and he thinks it’s unfortunate that it happened to Fisher’s home.

“I think it’s terrible that someone would do that to the coach,” Bargas said. “It’s rude and bad. It shouldn’t happen to anybody.”

Bargas strongly believes no one in his program committed the crime and if they did it would result in dismissal from the team. He said he plans to talk to his team about what happened to Fisher’s home.

Fisher is in his first year as coach of the Mustangs and he said he is just getting to know about the rivalry. He doesn’t like what he sees so far.

Estancia players and coaches were chanting at Costa Mesa players in a taunting manner after the Eagles’ win Friday night, Fisher said. Bargas said none of his coaches would do such a thing, but said there might be a possibility his players did.

“This has nothing to do with the game,” Fisher said. “They beat us. They just played better than us. This has everything to do with what happened outside of the game. Now I know what the script is. I’ll prepare our players and coaches appropriately. We’ve been trying to be nice. We’re in the same city and same league. We’re trying to make [the rivalry] healthy. They don’t want to make it healthy, then fine. We’ll approach it a different way.”

Robert Murtha, Estancia football’s booster president, said he was surprised that Fisher’s home was vandalized. He said it doesn’t make sense for someone from Estancia to commit the crime after a big win.

He also believed the parking sign was the same one that had been stolen from Costa Mesa High School’s parking lot when the sign was there for complimentary parking for Estancia supporters who were working at the OC Fair to raise money for the program.

Katrina Foley, the Costa Mesa football booster president, said the sign left on Fisher’s yard is not the sign that was at Costa Mesa High School for parking during the summer.

“The real concern is whoever did this specifically sought a teacher and coach’s home and targeted the home to destroy the property,” Foley said. “If this happened to Coach Bargas I would be equally outraged. How does someone even do this? It’s not right.”