Prep football: How Bradshaw Christian went from a new program to a small powerhouse
Drew Rickert grew up in the hustle and bustle of San Bernardino County, surrounded by traffic, strip malls and people.
He played high school sports at Redlands High School and baseball at New Mexico State. He got into teaching and coaching in Riverside but yearned for something different, something smaller scale, with student-athletes harboring big dreams.
Rickert some 19 years ago pored over the internet and saw an opening at tiny Bradshaw Christian High School in Sacramento. He landed the gig and created the football program from scratch; he also assumed control of the 1-year-old baseball team.
“I was a little leery at first,” Rickert said with a laugh. “My first year here, we had 21 kids in football. Only three had ever played tackle football before. The positive was the kids didn’t have any bad habits to break. What I was teaching and coaching was all they knew. It’s been a blessing. They trusted me, and we won enough for them to trust me.”
The trust never left. It has only grown, as has Bradshaw Christian’s trophy case. Rickert quickly built a powerhouse small-school program, relying on the run game and defense to reach seven Sac-Joaquin Section title games and win five championships. His current team is his youngest yet, with just three seniors, and the kids performed big again. Seeded fifth, the host Pride rolled past No. 12 Delhi in a Division VI opener on Friday night, 29-6.
Mateo Mojica rushed for a 50-yard touchdown to open the scoring, and fellow sophomore Brandon Burden had touchdown runs of 55, 17 and 7 yards for Bradshaw Christian, which moved to 8-2 and will play at No. 4 Marysville next.
As baseball coach, Rickert won five section banners and enjoyed the view as assistant coach last season under head man Kurt Takahashi, when the Pride won their sixth and then their first Northern California championship last spring.
What Rickert has stressed over the years is to have student-athletes get as active as possible. Bradshaw Christian is a small-school power across the board, girls and boys, with 30 section crowns in 19 years of existence, and there’s a theme shared by coaches across campus: Share the athletes. The football team has 30 players; 25 will play other sports. That includes Ethan Rickert, son of the football coach.
He is the starting quarterback, an impact third baseman and a key role player in basketball, all while maintaining a 3.6-grade point average. He is a sophomore who played varsity sports as a freshman.
“Ethan’s a three-sport guy, a stud in all of them, and we love it that kids play as many sports as they can,” said Alex Williams, Bradshaw Christian’s athletic director and boys’ basketball coach. “I’ve heard horror stories of other schools where the baseball coach tells his players that they have to stick with baseball only, or football coaches telling their guys they can’t do anything but football. I can’t tell you how many kids who only played one sport, next-level kids who can play in college, and they burn out.”
Takahashi’s son Jackson is a starter in the trenches in football and in baseball. Takahashi, Rickert and Williams are in constant contact, each pulling for each other and sharing athletes.
“Me, Kurt and Drew, we all think a like and think kids should lay multiple sports,” Williams said, “We’re firm believers in that. We have the same vision. If you’re a football player, go wrestle, or do track Get involved. It makes you better as an athlete.”
Bradshaw Christian’s volleyball coach, Melissa Bowers, doubles as the school’s volleyball coach. She raved about Rickert the coach, saying. “He’s a huge part of what we are here. Drew will preach that these aren’t his football players or my volleyball players. They’re our players.”
Rickert raved about his son, who grew up around football and baseball. He was a ball boy. He tagged with his pop since he could walk.
“Ethan plays anything, and he’d play five sports if he could make the time,” coach Rickert said. “He loves it. He’d rather be doing something than just sitting around.”
Coaching a son isn’t always easy, the coach said.
“It’s hard being a dad and a coach sometimes, but it’s enjoyable for me to watching him play, to see him having fun, to see him having success.”
Williams is a 2009 graduate of Bradshaw Christian. He was Rickert’s first varsity quarterback, a three-year starter who saw the Pride go from four wins to six to 10, including the program’s first section championship in 2008. Williams graduated from Cal Poly with an engineering degree and worked for five years in civil engineering. But he was drawn to the idea of coaching, of impacting young minds.
So he jumped at the chance to return to Bradshaw Christian four years ago.
“Coaching is a different side of the spectrum from engineering, and that was a big decision to leave that for coaching,” Williams said. “The fulfillment you get in watching kids grow, I wanted to be a part of that. We all love to win, Kurt, Drew and me, and we’re all ultra competitive, but if we can make our players become better fathers, better husbands, better people, then we’ve done our job.”
This story was originally published November 4, 2022 at 10:49 PM.