Western’s James O’Brien helped the Wildcats earn redemption after winning their first state championship
Western was “disgusted by the way” its 2021 season ended. The Wildcats made the Class 2A championship for the first time and came up one point short against Lithia Newsome.
It fueled them all through the offseason and all the way back to the 2A final, where Western finally got its revenge and beat
Newsome, 34-14. After years of building, the Wildcats finally brought a state title back to Davie and it’s why James O’Brien is the Miami Herald’s Broward County Flag Football Coach of the Year.
“You chase winning and you chase winning,” the coach said, “and then, when you finally catch it, you realize that what you thought you wanted is overshadowed by the joy that you see take place on the field.”
Western put together the first undefeated season in school history and became the first South Florida team to win a flag football state championship since Miramar in 2006.
It was the product of more than a decade of work.
In his 12th year with the Wildcats, O’Brien’s work paid off.
Western made the Florida High School Athletic Association tournament for the first time in
O’Brien’s second season, back in 2012, and then didn’t make it again until 2018, when the Wildcats reached the Region 4-2A championship for the first time.
For two years, Palm Beach County teams were a road block — Seminole Ridge won the region in 2018 and Park Vista in 2019 — before Western finally broke through last season, only to come up one point short of history.
“The fact that we lost by one,” O’Brien said, “that became the driving force of what we did this year.”
Still, those 12 years of building were, too. There was a time, O’Brien said, when he would build his entire schedule around the track and field and girls’ lacrosse seasons, just trying to get whatever athletes he could.
It’s finally different now. The Wildcats have ascended and are now one of the premier programs in Broward.