Santa Margarita Tabbed for State Bowl Championship Game

A day after winning a Southern Section Pac-5 championship, Santa Margarita posted another victory.

The Eagles were selected to play in the California State Division I Bowl Championship next Friday against Central Coast champion San Jose Bellarmine  (12-1). The game will be at Home Depot Center at 8 p.m.

Santa Margarita (12-2) was contending for the spot with Inland Division champion Vista Murrieta, which was undefeated on the field but forfeited five nonleague games because of an ineligible player. Also on the board as viable candidates were Bakersfield (14-0) from the Central Section, and Poway (12-0-1) from the San Diego Section. 

Westlake Village Westlake (14-0), the champion of the Southern Section's Northern Division, was selected to play in the Open Bowl against Concord De La Salle, which beat Bellarmine in double overtime, 26-23, in the season opener.

"We’re going to the show—is this great for Rancho Santa Margarita or what?" said Eagles second-year coach Harry Welch on Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours after , to win the school's first championship since winning back-to-back Division V titles in 1996-97.

For Welch, it's a significant milestone. He won the first Division I Bowl game in 2005 while coaching Canyon Country Canyon, and two seasons ago won the Small School Bowl with St. Margaret's. Now, he has the opportunity to win three Bowl games with three different teams in six years, an achievement that may never be matched.

Yet apart from what the game means to Welch personally -- and it means a lot -- he said he was particularly happy for what it meant to the community.

"My dream when I took the job at Santa Margarita was to positively involve the community, and I am so happy for this community," Welch said. "The people, the students, the faculty, the whole community has come out to support us. (Mayor) Tony Beall came up after the game and shook my hand and said 'Thank you.' I couldn’t be happier for this community.

"I’m happy for my men, we have the greatest coaching staff I’ve ever been around. The students—we had 1,500 students at Santa Magarita and get 3,000 for the games. When they started chanting “We believe," this is an experience that transcends football to the utmost. This is about a community being involved and celebrating the moment. I am so happy and proud."

On Sunday morning, he was introduced at a breakfast at Coto de Caza Country Club and given a standing ovation by the 200 in attendance.

Most people thought that Santa Margarita's 21-14 loss to Mater Dei in the Trinity League opener would haunt them when 10 section commissioners met on Sunday morning to hash out the Bowl participants. Mater Dei had been beaten by Corona Centennial, which was beaten by Vista Murrieta in the Inland championship. But apparently the five forfeits left a bad impression on the commissioners.

The other factor going against Santa Margarita's bid for the Bowl was that the Central Section has not had a participant in the Bowl Championships, and an undefeated section champion such as Bakersfield would represent its best chance. Precedent had been set for such emotional thinking; undefeated Crenshaw from the Los Angeles Section had previously reached Open Bowl games despite playing inferior competition with a similar rationale: when would the City get another chance to participate?

That issue may have been alleviated with the selection of Fresno Washington to the Division III game against Moraga Campolindo.

Despite the loss to Mater Dei, no team could match the strength of schedule that Santa Margarita had. Over the last five weeks, it lost in overtime to the two-time Pac-5 champion Servite (10-2), which was the No. 1 seeded team in the playoffs; beat La Puente Bishop Amat (6-5), third-seeded Long Beach Poly (10-2), second-seeded Mission Viejo (10-3), and San Clemente (12-2).

Poly, and San Clemente were one-loss teams prior to losing to Santa Margarita, and one of Mission's two losses were to the No. 1 team in the nation. Nine of the Eagles' victories came against opponents that were at least two games over .500.

Bellarmine averaged 38.6 points on offense and allowed 11.4 on defense over the course of the season. It defeated Palo Alto, 41-13, in the Central Coast Open Championship on Dec. 2, so it will have had an extra week to prepare this game.

Led by junior quarterback Johnny Stanton and USC-bound lineman Max Tuerk, Santa Margarita has averaged 36.1 points on offense while allowing 17.6 on defense.