Blog Post: Wegher, Once a Star Quarterback at Westlake, Can't Relate to What the School has Become

One of the things that Charlie Wegher liked as a player at Westlake High School was the fact that in any given year, any Marmonte League team might rise up and steal the spotlight.

"It was kind of cool because you didn’t know from year to year who was going to win the league,” he said. “If somebody had a good group of kids that year, then
maybe it was their year. And then maybe the next year it was a different
school.”

That hasn’t been the case in the Marmonte League for a while. Wegher,who graduated in 1982, remembered the way it used to be.

"You always felt like, if you worked hard and did things well as a team, you always had a chance to be league champions, as opposed to now when it's pretty much confined to three teams,” he said.

Wegher said Newbury Park was league champs in the fall of 1981, his senior
year, and he said that Thousand Oaks was also very good that year. Westlake went to the playoffs and ended 5-6. The year before, Westlake won the league title. Wegher was the backup quarterback on that Warriors team.

There were some different teams in the Marmonte League in the early 1980’s. But along with Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks, Royal and Simi Valley were league
members, as they are now. Moorpark wasn’t yet.

"It was great, the level of competition in the league was tighter. It was exciting,”
said Wegher, who played for George Contreras at Westlake. Wegher went on to play at Cal State Northridge, then came back as an assistant coach under Contreras at Westlake.

When Contreras left to coach his son at Rio Mesa High, Jim Benkert took over at
Westlake for the 1989 season. Wegher stayed on as an assistant coach until
taking the head coaching job at Agoura in 1992. Since then, the Marmonte League has grown.

In the 1990’s, Newbury Park had a run as the league’s best team, highlighted by it's undefeated 14-0 season in 1993. Later, head coach George Hurley earned a
National Coach of the Year honor. Westlake started getting stronger during the ‘90’s and dominated in the early 2000's. But later in the decade, Moorpark seemed destined to become the league power.

In 2008, a season in which Agoura defeated Westlake 23-22, the Chargers finished 5-5, the last season of a successful nine-year run for the Chargers. The
Warriors were 7-5 and made it to the second round of the CIF playoffs.

Moorpark, which lost in the CIF title game in 2005, 2006 and 2008, was predicted by pundits to continue as the league’s top team in 2009. However, Westlake
surprised everyone behind its savvy audible-calling junior quarterback Nick
Isham.

When Moorpark and Westlake met on Nov.13, 2009, Friday the 13^th, both teams were 9-0. But the Warriors, at home, easily beat the Musketeers, 38-14, in the regular season finale.

Westlake, behind backup freshman quarterback Justin Moore, came from behind in the last minute of the CIF championship game and beat Moorpark, 14-10, in the thrilling rematch.

The next year Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure, which had each created dynasties in football by then, joined the league. And Westlake only got better. For
Wegher, the Agoura coach, witnessing the change in the league and particularly in Westlake, his alma mater, has been somewhat unsettling.

"It's pretty foreign to me,” Wegher said. “I don’t really feel a strong attachment to that school [Westlake] anymore. It’s just changed so much. And the way they do business is so different. It’s no longer really a neighborhood school. It’s kind
of a regional school, you know? It’s different. It’s just a different mentality. They bring in whoever they need to bring in to make sure that they continue to be successful. But that’s not how I was brought up.

"We played an alumni game against Oak Park [recently]. We had guys come back from 20 years ago, playing with guys from last year. They were all Agoura kids, and even though they were from different eras, there was a sense of family there. And they’re playing against Oak Park and those kids are the ones they played
against in Pop Warner.”

Being part of that alumni game reminded the Agoura coach of what he liked about high school football when he played, and what disappoints him about it now.

"There’s that sense of rivalry and camaraderie that you just don’t get when you’ve got kids coming in from all over the place, to kind of be mercenaries –
just to win for you, and then they’re gone. You don’t develop that sense
of community. And that’s kind of the sad part about where high school athletics
is going,” Wegher said.

"It's different and it’s not only Westlake. There's a lot of schools now. But certainly, my alma mater is not what it was when I was there. It’s disappointing. I’m not sure high school athletics is going in the right direction right now. It’s kind
of scary. There’s a lot of people involved that are missing the value of it, I
think.”