Thanks to a very good San Diego Torrey Pines football team and a bizarre set of circumstances that led to the halftime resignation of head coach Rick Bray, Friday was a very bad night for the Colton High School football program.
Any lasting satisfaction left from last year’s CIF-SS Central Division title disappeared in the span of two quarters, as the Yellowjackets were whipped by Torrey Pines 35-7 and might have lost their coaching staff in the process.
Bray, last year’s All-Sun Coach of the Year, left the game at halftime after addressing his team in response to his son, assistant coach B.J. Bray, being pulled from the sidelines in the second quarter by the Colton High School administration. Another one of Rick Bray’s sons — Richard Bray Jr. — led a shaken team in the second half.
“They pulled my brother off the sidelines and my dad isn’t going to allow one of us to be treated like that, so he left too,” Richard Bray Jr. said after the game. “He talked to the kids at halftime and asked the rest of us coaches to get the kids through the second half.”
According to Richard Bray Jr., B.J. Bray was disciplined Friday as a response to his actions at the Colton Joint Unified School District’s school board meeting May 5, the one where Rick Bray’s contract to coach the Yellowjackets was renewed after a lengthy soap opera in which the school district opened the job because Bray, a campus security officer, is not a credentialed teacher.
At the meeting, B.J. Bray emotionally defended his father, yelling at the parents of former CHS running back Tyler Irvin, who criticized Rick Bray during the open forum session.
When asked why the Colton adminstration waited until Friday to mete out punishment, Richard Bray Jr. didn’t have an answer.
“I’m really not sure what to say and what I can say,” Bray Jr. said. “All I know is that this team might not have a coaching staff. I really don’t know what the next move is. This is a tough night for all of us.”
Colton athletic director Harold Strauss did not comment when asked about the situation.
