Torrey Pines Falcons

Head Coach - Rod Gladnick

The Falcons won outright CIF Championships in 1992 and then again 2003. They were co-champions in the 1997 and 2004 seasons, and CIF runners-up in 1998 and 2005. In 2018, the Falcons finished the regular season undefeated earning their 7th league championship in school history giving them the top seed in the Open Division bracket. After holding off a late comeback from 4th-seed San Marcos in the Open semi-final game, Torrey Pines earned their 7th CIF Championship appearance, but was upended by So-Cal Regional Champion and eventual State Runner-up Cathedral Catholic, 28-17 in the section Final.

Head coach Ron Gladnick will lead the storied Falcons program into the 2019 season, his 6th overall at Torrey Pines. Gladnick’s team will continue to run the Wing-T, an offense that has led the program to the quarter-finals or beyond in each of his five seasons as coach.

At this Summer’s LCC 7v7 passing tournament, SDFNL caught up with Strength and Conditioning coach Josh Fely, who is also the Varsity DB coach for Torrey Pines. Fely said the team has been working hard to get ready for the 2019 season. “I'm with these guys all off-season in charge of the strength and conditioning program and you know we’re going through the phases, during winter is when we can put on the majority of our mass and now as we’re transitioning more, getting closer to summer, that's when we start adding more conditioning in and start to get more agility work in there.”

The Falcons have lost a lot of fire-power from the 2018 team, but Fely feels the team is still right where they want to be. “As a group we’re young. You can imagine we had a 44-man, senior heavy team where we had 32 of those guys who graduated. But the biggest thing for us, is that the culture has been established, and all of these guys this season were kind of around and involved in that culture last year so other than the fact that we’re young like I said, we haven't lost a step so I'm happy with where we’re at right now.”

And the Falcons offense could be even better than last season, as they picked up the Gold Division Championship at the LCC Passing tournament this Summer. “Griffin Wilson is a guy who played receiver for us last year, jet sweep kind of stuff, but has really developed as a true receiver, kind of a speedy burner guy. Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi is our quarterback, he is also going to be a sophomore. He played JV as a freshman for us last year, has a big time arm. We’ve just got a lot of big bodies at the skill positions, Conan O'brien is another big receiver that we’ve got. We’re very versatile like I said, we’ve got big bodies, but we've got a burner in Griffin and we’ve got a big body who can go up for those 50/50 balls with Conan. Brayden's doing a good job of knowing when to put it on a rope and when to kind of lob it in there in a cover-two situation on like a seven route or something like that.”

The irony of Torrey Pines winning a passing tournament is that coach Gladnick runs that predominantly run-heavy, Wing-T offense. Coach Fely explains the Falcons will use skill players to their advantage. “Yea, like I said we’re a wing team too, so we run the ball 80-90 times and we’re doing such a great job with this 7-on-7 stuff because the kids buy into the culture like I said, I'll always refer back to our culture. It's taken us 5-6 years to get to this point, but you know we’re a Wing-T team, yet we’re always in the championship rounds it seems for 7-on-7 stuff. It's the kids who have bought into the program, and athletically we’re not the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, but our kids play with heart and that's what I love about our guys and about our program.”

The defense for Torrey Pines will be led by a couple of D1 recruits Fely told SDFNL. “On the defensive side of the ball, we’ve got a lot of guys from our linebacker core who are coming back. Junior LB Marco Notarainni has 3 early offers, Pac-12 level, All-CIF guy. He’s a big time player, gonna be a junior, probably was our best player last year as a sophomore. A couple months ago he picked up his first offer from Oregon State, I think he has 6 right now on the board, he’s flying up to Washington tomorrow to talk to their coaching staff, so he's playing outside linebacker. Grant Anderson, our inside linebacker also has a handful of offers...South Dakota State, USD, Army, it will be his senior year. Also Matt Lauter, and you know when I talk about our linebacker Grant Anderson, he is our smallest guy 6’1”, 225. Marco is 6’4”, 215, and Lauter is 6’3”, 215 as well. So we’ve got a big linebacking core.” Junior Dewey Egan is a great pass rusher and will also start on the OL.”

In the secondary, Fely says the Falcons will have some really great athletes who are are starting to figure it out. “We’ve got a good corner who is super young, only his second year playing football, rugby's his first sport, so the kid obviously isn't afraid of contact, Wyatt Gardner, who is most likely gonna be our starter there. Then safety wise, we’ve got another sophomore, big kid, 6’4”, skinny kid but can cover a lot of ground, Griffin Grant. And then our other safety is a returning starter and All-League guy last year, Dane Degoler. There are bits and pieces of everything but as far as a collective group we should be pretty solid”

Playing in arguably the toughest league in the county, Fely says the team is excited for the 2019 schedule. “I love it! We open up with Los Alamitos, then we’ve got San Clemente right after that, and we like going early against conference teams. Our head coach, is to me one of the best, if not the best in the business because he knows we’re gonna be a young team, so he scheduled us up because we want to see what we’re made of early. We could have easily gone the easier route and played down, but we want to play up see what our guys our made of and then kind of make adjustments from there. But I love it man, and then once we get to league in the Avocado I mean it doesn't get much better than that. To me that's the toughest league in San Diego and every single week is a grind, we call it the gauntlet for a reason, there really is no team that you can take your foot off the gas against.”

Preview written By Eric Williams (@WBKsports)

Bodie DeSliva from @SDPreps contributed to this preview

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SDFNL Team Preview: Torrey Pines

Eric Williams (@WBKsports)

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