This fall, Ramona’s Damon Baldwin will start his 20th season as the Bulldogs head football coach.
“Every year is different,” said Baldwin, who is also the school athletic director. “There is always a mystery — especially this year.”
While he was talking about the new section playoff format, he might just as well have been addressing his team.
“We’re young, but not rebuilding,” was how he put it.
First, about the section playoffs.
In years past, there has been no shortage of formats, from committees to fill out the brackets after coaches make their case for where they think they belong to most recently relying heavily on MaxPreps’ Power Ratings.
Those Power Ratings, which MaxPreps steadfastly refuses to divulge its format completely, includes overall records and strength of schedule.
But at least the schools had a pretty good idea what divisions they might be in at the start of the season. Not this year.
“No one knows what division they’ll play in until the end of the season,” said Baldwin, who is on the committee that will finalize the new format in July.
“The teams with the four best Power Ratings according to MaxPreps at the end of the year will be in the Open Division. The next 12 will be Division 1 and on down.”
So, a team could go unbeaten but if it played a weak schedule, it would probably not make the Open Division where a loss to a highly-rated team might count more than a win for another team hoping to get into the Open Division.
“Were in Division 1 last year,” said Baldwin, who learned early-on to try to schedule as tough as reasonable in the preseason, knowing that by playing in the Palomar League they will face highly-rated teams every week.
“If we have a great year, we’ll be Division 1 or maybe the top of Division 2, but if things go wrong, we could be in Division 3 or even Division 4. That makes more sense than being placed in a division before the season where you may not belong by the end of the season.
“It usually takes MaxPreps three weeks before they release the first Power Ratings. If we win seven or more games, we’ll be in Division 1. If we go 6-4 or 5-5, we might be Division 2. Go 4-6 or 3-7 and we might be in Division 4 or 5. Teams that go 1-9 with a strong schedule could still make the playoffs, it has happened before.”
At least the Bulldogs will get 10 games this year.
A year ago, before supposedly opening the season against Christian, that school called to say its numbers were not what they hoped for and they’d have to cancel.
“We tried to find an opponent for more than two months, but we couldn’t fill the date, so we ended up playing just nine games,” said Baldwin, who replaced Christian with powerful Steele Canyon this year after going 5-4 before losing in the playoff opener. “I felt badly for the players who looked forward to having 10 games.”
Baldwin likes to wait as long as he can before starting spring ball to get athletes who play multiple sports, meaning the Bulldogs finish the early workouts this week.
He has noticed a major change since COVID.
“We used to get kids who just wanted to be part of the process, knowing they might not get to play a lot of games,” he said. “They learned during COVID to just do something else. Although our numbers are strong, kids that stay in football now are the ones who are ‘bought in’ and love the game.
“That’s the thing about Ramona kids. We don’t get or lose a lot of players to transferring — because we have some military families occasionally we gain or lose one — but our kids work hard.”
Baldwin didn’t want to signal out players or even specific positions, as summer 7-on-7 ball and fall practice starting Aug. 1 will be more definitive. Two things for sure, defensive end Ryder Tomkiel, who is coming off an ACL injury, and linebacker Ethan Grajada, will be the first two of four team captains.
He says there are three quarterbacks vying for the position, two of them sophomores, and no one has separated from the pack. The Bulldogs have been blessed with veteran, quality running backs in the past but those positions are wide open. Baldwin is loving his offensive line, saying ‘they’ are coachable and fierce kids who love to go after it.
“What we know for sure is we’ll have three levels — varsity, JV and freshman,” said Baldwin. “Like every year, novice football becomes a discussion, those numbers sort themselves out in early August.
“We had a huge freshman class last season; this year’s signups so far are much less. We’ll see.”
