When the Woodbridge football team started the season 0-7, some players on the team quit.
“They’re regretting it now,” said Woodbridge coach Connor McBride.
That 0-7 start included an 0-2 record in the Omicron League. That second league loss was an ugly one, 55-7 to Pacifica.
Then Woodbridge started winning. The Warriors beat Katella 35-0 and tied Buena Park for third place in league. They won a coin flip for the league’s last automatic entry to the CIF Southern Section playoffs and they went on to win the Division 13 championship last week with a 24-23 win over Montebello in the division final.
A look at Woodbridge’s nonleague schedule shows that the Warriors took on some good opponents.
The first game was against Calvary Chapel, which went 10-0 during the regular season.
Another nonleague opponent was Irvine, which played in a CIF-SS semifinal. The Warriors also played Beckman, which won the CIF-SS Division 8 championship last week.
McBride, 27, was an outstanding running back at Woodbridge. In 2016 he established the school’s career rushing record. He became the Woodbridge head coach this past January.
He has some very experienced coaches on his staff, including former Woodbridge head coach Rick Gibson, who runs the offense. Gibson coached the Warriors to a CIF-SS championship in 1998.
Quarterbacks coach John Halagan has coached football at the school but more notably was the Woodbridge boys basketball coach for 28 seasons and won a CIF-SS championship. Cliff Nelson has been on the Woodbridge staff for decades.
Three games into the season those coaches decided to let freshman Waylon Stone be the team’s starting quarterback. Stone has shown much promise, throwing for 1,872 yards and seven touchdowns and has rushed for 584 yards and nine touchdowns.
McBride credits the players who did not turn in their gear in when others did, who hung in there and made a championship run possible.
“We were just figuring things out as the season went along,” McBride said. “Once we got that first win we had the confidence that we could keep winning. I give it all to the kids who were able to make us do that.”
