For Breakaway, Kingsmen Will Break From Beach

Hanging on a wall in the office of Cal Lutheran football Coach Scott Squires is a collage of photos taken on a San Diego-area beach near the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, where the Kingsmen held fall practice last season.

The pictures show Cal Lutheran players in a human pyramid, waves lapping at the knees of those on the bottom in one snapshot, team members frolicking in the sand and the sea in others.

The pictures were taken during the first “breakaway,” four days of fun and games played with the idea of fostering familiarity and friendship among the team members preparing for a new season.

This year, the goal of the breakaway remains the same. Only the hideaway will change.

Beginning Tuesday, the Kingsmen will try to mesh at Mile-High Pines Camp, about 25 miles east of Big Bear in San Bernardino. The team will return to Thousand Oaks next Friday, in time for the first practice session in pads later that day.

Approximately 8,400 feet above sea level, Mile-High Pines was not Squires’ first choice for a campsite. The coach, whose brother Steve is a commander living on the Coronado base, planned to go Navy again.

He decided against that option when base officials made him an offer too good to be true to his ideas regarding the breakaway.

“They were going to have about 5,000 Navy SEALS on the base for training at the same time we wanted to go,” Squires said. “The SEALS were going to be in the barracks and they didn’t have room for us there. So they offered to put us up in officers’ quarters, but I told them no, that I wanted us to be in the barracks.

“The main purpose of the whole thing, for me, is to bring the team together, and that can’t happen in the officers’ quarters. In officers’ quarters, there’s a TV, and everybody can just go in their own quarters and shut the door. The barracks are more open, there’s a common bathroom, there’s no TV, and everybody is kind of forced to come together and get to know each other. That builds team unity, and that’s what I want.”

Toward that end, this year’s roster of 104 players--including 63 newcomers--will be divided into groups of 10 or 11 who will room in cabins and remain together as teams for activities during the breakaway, and the upcoming season.

Units established at the camp will remain intact, with players grouped according to the alignment for pregame warmups.

“We’re looking forward to it,” Squires said. “Kids have been asking all summer, ‘Where are we gonna go?’ ”

“We got a lot of good feedback about it last year, and it’s going to be so much better this time, just because we have about 40 or so kids who have been through it before and who know what it’s all about.”

For Squires, it’s all about teamwork, and a breakaway is the picture-perfect way to encourage it.

The Kingsmen will again stage a pancake breakfast for fellow students on campus after they return to Cal Lutheran.

A new twist on preseason activities is a team-only pig roast planned for the weekend before the Sept. 6 opener against Menlo College.

“We knew we wanted to have a luau-type thing,” said Squires, who convinced a friend in Temecula to donate one of two pigs he owns. “I told him what we wanted to do, that we wanted to barbecue a pig, and he said, ‘Here, this one’s ready to go.’

“Now the next thing is to find someone who knows how to cook it. Hopefully, we’ll find somebody.”

Look for the schedule to take a decidedly Lutheran turn now that Squires, in his second season, has settled in.

The coach has slated the first meeting between Cal Lutheran and Pacific Lutheran of Tacoma, Wash., for the second game of the season on Sept. 13 at Mt. Clef Stadium.

Pacific Lutheran, from which Squires and defensive coordinator Jud Keim graduated, replaces Azusa Pacific on this year’s schedule.

An opponent for the future could be Texas Lutheran, where last year’s defensive coordinator, Bryan Marmion, went in April to become head coach.

“Don’t be surprised if we start playing them sometime soon, too,” Squires said.

Zack Hernandez, a graduate of L.A. Baptist High who split time with graduated Ryan Huisenga last season, would start at quarterback if the season started today, Squires said.

But the first game is 3 1/2 weeks away, and spirited competition for the position could come from all sides.

The Kingsmen have eight quarterbacks. Among them are Derek Brown, who lost out to Aaron Flowers in a battle for the starting job at Cal State Northridge last season, and Teohua Sanchez, who led St. Bonaventure High to the Southern Section Division X championship last year.