Alums, discipline have Balboa High in S.F. football title game
Alums, discipline have Balboa High in S.F. football title game
The scoreboard last week should have been evidence enough for Poutoa Fuega, a longtime Balboa ROTC instructor turned first-year varsity football coach.
The San Francisco Section semifinal victory vaulted the Buccaneers to Thursday’s title tilt — the annual Turkey Day Game — and came four weeks after Lincoln, a longtime section power, had defeated Balboa 52-40.
Big, tough Balboa kids tearing up wasn’t what Fuega, 50, pictured when he took the job shortly after the 2014 season, which ended 4-7.
Fuega, who served in the Army, was the JV coach for two seasons and understood the culture of the school and program, and knew he had some skilled kids.
A quarter of the team was ineligible in the spring and missed the start of the season.
A lot of these kids come from single-parent homes.
Some of them don’t have real families at all.
Fuega noticed Davis when he was working out with 2006 graduate McLeod Bethel-Thompson, who had — with Davis — led Balboa to SFS title games in 2004 and 2005.
Bethel-Thompson played at UCLA and Sacramento State, and signed with the 49ers on Tuesday (See story, B4).
[...] have the Williams brothers, Edward (a retired U.S. Army Specialist who served two tours in Iraq) and Alec, two Balboa graduates who before the Lincoln game last week rescued an elderly woman from a burning building across the street from Balboa.
The Bucs are led by Lelea, a 6-foot-2, 231-pound senior who has accounted for 15 touchdowns in six games.
Defensively, Keon Thomas (5-8, 170) and Clayton Tran (5-7, 170) anchor the linebacker corps, but the it’s the interior play of Nicholas Sagaiga (6-3, 255) and Faletui Manu (6-2, 260) that causes opponents’ problems.