FOOTBALL: Selli Has Carlmont on Rise

With so much talk of change swirling around the Carlmont High School football program, you'd think the new head coach's name would be Barack Obama, not Jason Selli.

With the Scots' encouraging 2-2 start to the season, Selli has created a significant buzz, sending a jolt of life into a football program that appeared directionless in recent seasons.

"He's changing the culture down there at Carlmont," said Burlingame football coach John Philipopoulos, who had Selli on his staff the last four seasons. "He's changing their expectations. Now it's starting to show on the field."

Selli, who lives in Pacifica, hopes he has started to usher in a new era of Carlmont football. The Scots' first victory against Aragon in 21 years – a 20-6 win on Sept. 25 – was a huge step toward remodeling the program's reputation in Belmont and beyond.

The next steps will be to forge an improved finish in the Peninsula Athletic League and to secure the program's first Central Coast Section playoff berth since 1991.

Those steps are related. Carlmont's path to CCS runs through the PAL Lake Division season, which begins for the Scots with a home game against Hillsdale High School on Oct. 15. If Carlmont wins the Lake, it clinches a postseason berth.

"People are excited," said Selli. "They can sense that our program is heading in the right direction. When you beat a good program like Aragon, that will put you more in the spotlight.

"People are going to look at what you're doing and say, 'Maybe this school is doing something different than in years past.' For me, I'm just coaching and trying to get the kids to have fun and learn the systems on offense and defense, and winning comes secondary."

Fun has been a rarity for the Carlmont football program in recent years. The school would figure to have an advantage in football as it boasts the highest enrollment of the six schools in the Sequoia Union High School District.

Instead, the Scots remain trapped in a tailspin that saw the team drop from the top-level PAL Bay Division to the Ocean Division in 2008. This season, Carlmont has dropped further into the Lake Division, the lowest competition level in the PAL.

But with the progress Selli has engineered this season, the team already stands one win away from matching last season's victory total. The hype surrounding the coach is that he will get the Scots to not only improve upon that 3-7 mark, but also to restore Carlmont's image in throughout the PAL.

"I think that's probably, most definitely going to happen based on the success they're having and will probably continue to have," said Philipopoulos. "It looks [like] Carlmont's finally going to have some stability at the head coaching position. I think Carlmont is going to be a program on the rise over the next few years."

This is not Selli's first attempt at giving a facelift to the image of Carlmont football. He served a brief stint as the Scots' head coach in 2005. He spent the following seasons as an assistant at Burlingame before taking the head job at Carlmont.

He is also a former boys soccer coach at Carlmont. He led the Scots to a tri-championship in the tough PAL Bay Division in 2008, and then stepped down after the birth of his third child.

Selli's first major task will be to change Carlmont's league performance. Last season, the Scots went 0-5 in the Ocean, leading to the demotion to the Lake Divison.

Carlmont's 2-2 start shows signs of promise heading into its Lake campaign. The Scots hung with San Mateo, the Ocean's defending champion, in a 14-7 defeat. Aside from a 34-0 loss to Willow Glen, Carlmont has held its opponents to a total of 42 points in its three other games.

"He's just a defensive wizard," said Philipopoulos. "He brought some great ideas over here to Burlingame. I think we gave him a few ideas as well. He is putting that together."

Not all the talent is on defense though. The Scots' offense includes senior running back Robert Johnson, the head of an offensive core still waiting to gain the swagger shown by the team's defense. Junior quarterback Jack Karasky continues to develop as Carlmont solidifies its system after a change from the no-huddle offense of the last two years.

Carlmont had a bye last week, allowing the Scots to work on perfecting the small details that make the difference between winning and losing. Selli hopes the proof will be evident as the Scots host Skyline in a non-league game on Friday at 3pm.

"I think our main goals are to go out each game and play our best games as we can," said Selli. "We want to bring our 'A' game for each game. Ultimately, everybody's goal is pretty much the same. You want to win every game you can and make the playoffs and win some championships. Those are our goals for sure."