![\"Bonita](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SUT-L-prepscene-1024_004.jpg\")
Bonita Vista High School\u2019s Ta\u2019Vyon Moore runs by Hilltop defender William Resendiz during Friday game. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker for The San Diego Union-Tribune)\nIn the present<\/p>\n
Hilltop football coach and athletic director Bryan Wagner is aware he\u2019s had a blessed life.<\/p>\n
Wagner was a star athlete at Hilltop. He played college football at Cal Lutheran and Cal State Northridge. He had a nine-year NFL career as a punter, including a Super Bowl appearance with his hometown San Diego Chargers in 1995.<\/p>\n
And now he\u2019s come full circle.<\/p>\n
Prior to kickoff for Friday night\u2019s Lancers\u2019 homecoming game against Bonita Vista, Wagner was inducted into Hilltop\u2019s Hall of Fame<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so honored to be selected,\u201d said Wagner, a 1980 Hilltop graduate. \u201cIt\u2019s a great privilege to be considered a part of the school\u2019s history. It will be tough for me to step out of my mindset of being the head coach to appreciate the moment. I know there will be friends there I haven\u2019t seen in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among those who came to see Wagner was his high school coach, Stan Canaris.<\/p>\n
\u201cBryan was always a class act,\u201d said Canaris, who had the Eastlake football stadium named in his honor as the first principal of the school. \u201cHe deserves any recognition he gets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canaris assembled one of the top staffs in South Bay. It included the legendary Gene Alim, former Eastlake coach Alan Duke and former USD quarterback Jan Chapman. The results followed.<\/p>\n
Wagner, who also starred in soccer and baseball at Hilltop, played just two years of football in 1978 and 1979.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to say it, but Hilltop was always considered a patsy in football,\u201d admitted Wagner. \u201cBut my junior year, we beat Sweetwater and we started to get the feeling, \u2018Yes we can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That year the Lancers finished 8-2 and won the Metro Conference Championship. The next year Hilltop went a perfect 9-0 before losing to San Pasqual 28-21 in the playoffs. Their defense was outstanding, posting four shutouts and only allowed more than one TD in a game just twice.<\/p>\n
Wagner was a record-setting kicker and punter those years \u2014 and, he said, the team\u2019s \u201cdisaster quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really the third quarterback, so if I got in there, it was a disaster for somebody,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n
In his senior year against Castle Park, Wagner broke the section record when he kicked a 53-yard field goal. He was also credited with punts of 79 and 73 yards, both of which still remain among the longest in section history.<\/p>\n
What does he tell his players today about all he\u2019s accomplished in life?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all been preparation getting me to where I am, here and now,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s game was scoreless at halftime.<\/p>\n
Bonita Vista High School\u2019s Ta\u2019Vyon Moore runs by Hilltop defender William Resendiz during Friday game. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker for The San Diego Union-Tribune)
\nIn the present<\/p>\n
Wagner\u2019s defending league championship squad entered this week\u2019s battle for Metro South Bay control with a 5-3 record. After starting the season with a pair of victories, the Lancers hit a bit of a skid, losing three straight.<\/p>\n
They righted the ship with road wins against Vista, Mar Vista and Sweetwater.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, everyone counted us out,\u201d said Wagner. \u201cWe got on a roll in our league games, and quite honestly, we manhandled everyone doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
About Bonita Vista<\/p>\n
The Barons lost their first three games before winning four of their next five to get back to .500.\u00a0 First-year coach Diante Lee credited Bonita\u2019s 14-7 victory over El Capitan as the game that turned things around.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess they had beaten us up pretty bad the year before and our confidence wasn\u2019t great,\u201d explained Lee, 33. \u201cBut we had a great week of preparation, and you could see we were looking sharper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Max Shy, Angel Cortes and Julian Jimenez were among the seniors that helped turn things around.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur recent success of a reflection of the special bond this team has because of the seniors,\u201d said Lee. \u201cWe took our lumps, but we should be proud of the opportunities we\u2019ve given ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food review<\/p>\n
The top dog at all Hiltop football games is the \u201cBaum Dog\u201d from the south end of the stadium.<\/p>\n
The stand run by the baseball team. The dogs themselves are named after 29-year baseball coach John Baumgarten, who passed away in 2021 at age 80. Five out of five belches on the U-T five-belch meter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hilltop football coach and athletic director Bryan Wagner is aware he\u2019s had a blessed life. Wagner was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2044,181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-506127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-high-school-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}