BHS Football: H.D. teams are proving critics wrong

BARSTOW • Jose Rubio’s Desert Sky League pride runs deep.

After defeating Palm Springs on Nov. 28 in the CIF-Southern Section Eastern Division quarterfinals, the Barstow football coach began to hear scoring updates from the Silverado vs. Hesperia game. The high-scoring affair was just entering the fourth quarter as the Aztecs headed to the locker room.

With both teams still exchanging scores, Rubio said he’d prefer to play Silverado (5-7, 3-1 DSL) because it meant a DSL team was guaranteed a spot in the CIF-SS Eastern Division championship game.

Even though the Aztecs (9-3, 3-1 DSL) played a more competitive game against Hesperia, losing by one point in early October, Rubio still put his support behind the Hawks, who beat Barstow 37-20 on Oct. 24.

For High Desert football, the 2008 postseason could be viewed as a bit of a resurgence. If Serrano beats Citrus Hill tonight, it will guarantee an all-High Desert championship game.

“The final four says a lot for the High Desert,” Rubio said. “All the rankings got Mountain Pass teams, they got Sunkist teams, they got Desert Valley teams and in the final four you got the one league that it took them forever to rank a team.”

For much of the last few years, most of the DSL hasn’t faired well in nonleague play or the postseason. Despite showing noticeable improvement in 2008, the DSL wasn’t able to translate that success into top 10 spots in the Eastern Division rankings. Barstow and Burroughs popped in and out of the polls but never got out of the bottom half of the top 10. Silverado, which started 0-6 playing a tough nonleague schedule was never ranked.

“Rightfully so,” said Rubio about the lack of respect for DSL football. “Our Desert Sky League hasn’t been competitive that much except for Silverado doing stuff in recent years.”

Senior running back Jerrelle Green said the influx of young talent and new coaches has helped the DSL rise this year. For Barstow, only a handful of starters will graduate. At Silverado, quarterback Jemeryn Jenkins is just a junior and the Hawks have 17 other juniors listed on their roster.

“A lot of people talk about the High Desert and the Desert Sky League and say, ‘That ain’t a tough league.’ ” Green said. “I guess that proves that it is with us being the three teams still in it.”

Now that Rubio got his wish, he just has to figure out a way to beat the Hawks. Silverado has been the dominant team in the DSL for five years. The Hawks have owned at least a share of the last three DSL titles and five of the last seven. Barstow hasn’t beaten Silverado since 2003.

The Hawks are coming off a 59-44 win against Hesperia and have put up an average of 38.7 points per game in their last six games. Jenkins has actually out rushed each of Barstow’s three backs with 1,259 yards on the ground in addition to his 2,466 passing yards.

“What do you do to stop them?” Rubio said. “I think you just try to contain them as much as possible. Try to keep his big plays to a minimum.”

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