A real insight into Braxton Burmeister\u2019s success not only as the record-setting quarterback of Country Day\u2019s football team but also as a leader comes in the story of how he dealt with beating out a senior for the quarterback position in his freshman year.
\nAthletic director Jeff Hutzler, Burmeister\u2019s coach at that time, says, “The dynamic of talking to the friends of the senior he beat out” (were something the freshman had to work out). LJCDS is a small, private school and the Torrey football team, and athletic department as a whole, are close families where relationships have to be cared for or discontent could disrupt team harmony.
\nEveryone around the star student athlete agrees the 6\u20191″, 210-pounder has been blessed with lots of God-given talent. His head coach since his sophomore year, Tyler Hales, a teacher on campus, and Hutzler, who both know Braxton and his family well, single out his work ethic and drive for excellence.
\nBut it\u2019s the small things, and the intangibles, that convince folks like those at the University of Arizona to extend him a full-ride scholarship to play quarterback for the Wildcats–an offer granted in his sophomore year in high school.
\n“He is one of the hardest working athletes around, and he\u2019s dedicated to being good in-season and in the off-season,” gushes Hutzler, who probably partly wishes he hadn\u2019t stepped down from the reins of the Torrey football team three years ago, just so he could continue coaching Burmeister. “He\u2019s in the weight room. Diet: he lives a clean life. He\u2019s not a party-er.”
\nSays Hales: “I could talk about him a lot. I don\u2019t know if I have coached someone with the passion he has. Many kids say they want to be the greatest. With Braxton, he does it, whether it\u2019s in practice, a drill, he doesn\u2019t take it off. Matched against someone else, he tries to win it.”
\nNot to mention the 17-year-old\u2019s being unfailing polite in a phone interview after breaking the CIF record for total yards, formerly held by Dillon Baxter of Mission Bay. In response to each question, he begins with “Yes, sir.” A mature young individual, he has been guided well by parents Angela and Dan.
\nHis older brother Sage, a CIF record-holder himself, is a friend as well as workout partner to push him, as well as other athletes at Country Day. Sage, who led the Torrey basketball team to the Division 4 state title in 2012 as the San Diego Section Player of the Year, now plays football at Humboldt State.
\n“Sage is definitely a role model for me. We are close friends. When he\u2019s here, we\u2019re pretty much together 24\/7,” the younger brother says with obvious pride.
\nBraxton tells a funny story not uncommon among brothers who both play sports. “Sage and I are very competitive,” he says. “One day, I was in the fourth grade, we were playing home run derby in the backyard. I don\u2019t know if he knew I was walking behind him. He swung the bat and hit me in the head. I had to get 32 stitches.”
\nIn response to suggestions that that accident rearranged his brains for the better, he chuckles and says, “That could be.”
\nThe older brother ranks ninth in Section football records for points scored in a career with 402 during his years at LJCDS from 2009-2012. Baxter stands atop the stat with a whopping 697, far above other scorers.
\nWhatever the resulting cerebral alignment, Burmeister has come out a thinking quarterback and action figure nonpareil at his position, breaking Baxter\u2019s San Diego Section record for total yards–passing, rushing, and receiving–in the Torreys\u2019 51-12 win at University City Sept. 16.
\nHe didn\u2019t just break the seven-year-old record, Burmeister obliterated it in spectacular fashion. Before Friday\u2019s game, he only needed 16 yards to surpass Baxter\u2019s 10,230 yards–passing, rushing, and receiving. He drilled the Centurions, no longer a patsy under second-year head coach Ryan Price, by piling up 364 yards in the air for six touchdowns, and another 173 yards rushing and one TD, for the perfect number of 7 TD\u2019s on the night. That\u2019s a total of 537 offensive yards.
\nBurmeister now stands at 8,419 yards passing, 2,338 yards rushing, and -5 yards receiving, the new CIF San Diego Section record of 10,752 total yards.
\nBaxter, who received a scholarship to USC but finished elsewhere, lined up at receiver, as well as quarterback, so he was able to pile up 1,685 yards receiving, in addition to his 5,539 yards rushing and 3,006 yards passing.
\nBurmeister\u2019s team still has six more regular season games, plus potentially four playoff games if Country Day goes to the Division 4 finals. So each time he plays, he sets a new CIF record. He is averaging a phenomenal 429 total yards per game.
\nThe quarterback confides about the UC triumph, “Watching some film, we noticed some things we could do (against the Centurions). We came into the game pretty excited.
\n“We were watching the Scripps Ranch-UC game. Scripps Ranch threw a lot. (UC) played a lot of off-man coverage. When they went deep (in defending), we threw underneath. We had a lot of quarterback drafts and draws.”
\nIn characteristic fashion, Braxton spread the kudos around: “The line did a good job of protecting me.” His favorite passing targets have been receivers Casey Mariucci, with 20 receptions and 359 yards, Brennan Goring, 29 receptions for 353 yards, and Jaden Dir, 23 catches for 327 yards. David Brewster, like Mariucci and Goring a senior, has seven receptions for 160 yards.
\nHis body was sore after the UC game, though he didn\u2019t bring the issue up. A reporter asked him how he felt physically after the beating he took on 14 carries plus all the hits he took after releasing his passes. “Last night I took a hot shower, then I kind of sat down” (in the shower stall to let the water hit him), he said somewhat sheepishly. “I got face-masked. It wasn\u2019t called in the game. (As a result) my neck is pretty sore today. That\u2019s probably the part that hurts the most. My leg is also sore.” But he quickly concluded talk of his soreness, a normal part of the game.
\nSaid Hales, “In the \u2018Iolani game (in Hawaii, the Torreys\u2019 season opener) he took a pretty good hit early in the game. He came back. He was playing with pain. We had the last drive of the game (which fell short as LJCDS lost. 27-19). If he\u2019s in there, we know we have a chance to win.” “This year it\u2019s almost like having an offensive assistant coach on the field,” says the head coach. “You don\u2019t know that he calls a lot of the plays. We might have fourth-and-two. He might check it and have a running play (instead of the play we called) if he thinks we can get two or three yards that way.” Carmy Cesaire is LJCDS\u2019s offensive coordinator.
\nChuckles Hales. “As a coach, he\u2019s pretty nice to have.”
\nThe head coach traced his quarterback\u2019s development as a player: “As a freshman, it was more running. Sophomore year, there was more passing with the running. We let him check it off (call some plays) as a junior.”
\nLa Jolla Country Day, combining the talents of Burmeister, Goring, Mariucci, and others, won the CIF Division 5 title in Braxton\u2019s sophomore year, Hales\u2019 first year elevated to head coach. That means a Burmeister brother led the Torreys to a CIF title in two out of four school years, Sage\u2019s coming only two and a half years before his younger brother\u2019s.
\nOn the human side, Hales adds the personal note that with Braxton graduating next June, there won\u2019t be a Burmeister on campus next year after two decades: “After having them here for 20 years, it\u2019s going to be really different.”
\nRegarding Braxton\u2019s family, they do much more than provide two sons to be star athletes for LJCDS. “There\u2019s been nothing more important for the Burmeisters than each other,” said Hales. “They\u2019re giving, also. They help other kids going to camp. Right after summer break started, they were already on the beach for offseason workouts, with other kids working out with (the Burmeister boys).”
\nAngela, the mom, deflects praise for her contributions but acknowledges: “I generally have a ton of guys at our house, with \u2018Brax\u2019 and others.”
\nThe quarterback played basketball as a freshman, but gave that up to concentrate on his prime sport. He still plays some basketball in his free time. “I play video games. I surf a little, but I don\u2019t get much time in the water,” says the senior. His video games of choice are “Madden 17” and “Call of Duty”.
\nThe issue of recruiting gets hurled against private schools in CIF. Hutzler refutes that: “People talk about recruiting. We didn\u2019t recruit him as a three-year-old,” the age he first attended Country Day. “(As he got older) we knew had the chance to be a really good athlete.”
\n“Yes, sir, I was there at an early age,” says the athlete. “We moved out from Virginia. My mom wanted me in a private school. We lived in Oceanside. She put us in Country Day. I moved to La Jolla my eighth grade year.”
\n“I\u2019ve taught him in the third grade, fifth grade, and eighth grade (besides coaching him in high school),” said Hales. “You could tell when he was running around the fourth-graders that he could be an exceptional athlete. He has a laser focus to get the best scholarship offer and be an elite athlete. He\u2019s so competitive, That\u2019s the kind of leader he is. He\u2019s not necessarily going to be the most vocal kid, but he\u2019s not going to slack off. Every sprint, he\u2019s not taking off.”
\n“I\u2019ve known him since he was nine,” said the head coach. “Other kids want to follow. They see the kind of kid he is.”
\n“It has been really fun knowing him.”
\nRegarding the total yards record, Hales said, “We knew he was approaching it. You look at the record book and some of the names. It\u2019s pretty incredible. Dillon Baxter. I was looking at some of the film and to realize Braxton is going to pass him, it\u2019s hard to believe. His ability to be at the top of his game all of the time and play hard all the time” (is impressive).
\n“It\u2019s pretty cool to put La Jolla Country Day at that level. Obviously, we have some great kids that Braxton can throw to. Our offensive coordinator (Cesaire) does a great job.”
\nSaid Burmeister on his record, “It\u2019s definitely an awesome feeling. I have to pretty much give all the credit to the players and coaches around me. They have made it possible for me to be successful.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A real insight into Braxton Burmeister\u2019s success not only as the record-setting quarterback of Country Day\u2019s football team but also as a leader comes in the story of how he dealt with beating out a senior for the quarterback position in his freshman year. Athletic director Jeff Hutzler, Burmeister\u2019s coach at that time, says, “The […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":268125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"LJCDS quarterback Braxton Burmeister: The key to success is leadership","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}