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Wednesday, July 16
Coach of the Week




Randy Blankenship -- Fallbrook High (Calif.), Football

To fully appreciate where Randy Blankenship has taken Fallbrook High (Calif.) football, you need to understand where the program has been. The season before Blankenship took over three years ago, the Warriors were 1-9. Today, they are San Diego Section, Division I champions.

"To see the look in their eyes and their faces, they're satisfied and they should be," says Blankenship, 47. "We had two themes this year, and one of them was 'Feel the Love.' You really had the feeling that these guys cared about each other."

Maybe that was best shown when the Warriors were up big in the third quarter against Carlsbad High in Saturday's championship game at Qualcomm Stadium. With the ball on the 1-yard line, Blankenship asked starter Donny Lucy if he wanted to go in and score his second touchdown of the game.

"He told me, 'Na. Let one of the younger guys go in there,'" says Blankenship.

So junior Jon Morgan -- the scout team running back who was pounded by Fallbrook's first-team defense in practice all season -- was given the ball and scored on a 1-yard run.

The touchdown proved to be extra cushion for the Warriors (11-2) in their 50-12 win over Carlsbad in the Division I title game. Running back Evan Harney scored three second-quarter touchdowns to give Fallbrook an insurmountable 29-6 lead by halftime. In finishing off Carlsbad, Fallbrook went undefeated in the county. The Warriors' only two losses came to highly touted Esperanza High and Mater Dei High of Orange County.

This may have been the first championship for Fallbrook since 1986, but it's one of many for Blankenship, who has accumulated a 170-32-3 record in 10 years of coaching at Fallbrook, Clovis West High in Fresno, Calif., and Nevada Union High in Grass Valley, Calif.

"They didn't have a lot of expectations here (when I came)," says Blankenship, who won North County Coach of the Year and the San Diego Chargers' annual award to the area's best coach. "We've raised those expectations, and the coaching staff has done a super job of buying into what we wanted to. You can see the result. (Saturday) was the best final I've ever seen a team play."



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