Former Prosper, Celina running back charged with steroids possession, By: Danny Gallagher

“For the first seven weeks of the season, the Prosper Eagles have depended on the legs of running back Jake San Miguel” is how a former McKinney Courier-Gazette sports reporter described San Miguel's athletic talent in a story dated Oct. 26, 2003.

San Miguel ran for 1,114 yards in 2003 and scored 13 touchdowns that season. He had the second highest number of rushing yards and touchdowns in District 12-2A. He ranked 19th in rushing yards out of all the area District 3A and under schools, and third in District 12-2A in scoring.

But after suffering a knee injury in the seventh game of the season that kept him off the field for the rest of the year and dropping out of a Kansas college six weeks into his freshman season, San Miguel found himself back in Collin County and behind bars after he and two friends were caught by the McKinney Police Department with needles, syringes and nearly 300 milliliters of trenbolone acetate, a form of steroids.

McKinney police charged Miguel with a second-degree felony of possession of a controlled substance, along with Richard Edwards III, 19, of Leander, and Rebecca Kiefer, 17, of Austin, on Feb. 6, city spokesman Steve Hill said.

San Miguel helped Prosper score some big wins during his junior season, racking up more than 1,000 yards in his first seven games in just 132 carries when the rest of his team only carried the ball a combined 205 times. But his season came to a sudden halt when he suffered a knee injury in a game against the Valley View Eagles on Oct. 24, 2003. The Eagles season came to an end after their first playoff bout against the Boyd Yellowjackets, according to archives.

He returned to the field as a senior for the Celina Bobcats in 2004 when he held his record as the team's leading running back with 747 yards and 12 touchdowns out of 134 carries. However, he earned his high school diploma from McKinney North High School in 2005, McKinney Independent School District spokesman Larry Coker confirmed.

That same year, he was picked up by Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kan., where he joined the Ottawa Braves NAIA football program as a running back with jersey No. 5, the same number he wore for Prosper and Celina, according to Ottawa University rosters.

But Head Coach Kent Kessinger said six weeks into the season, he and San Miguel came to a “mutual agreement” to leave the team. His last official game was on Oct. 15, 2005.

“It basically came to a mutual agreement between us,” Kessinger said. “He was not enjoying his time here and he, at that time, had violated a number of team policies.”

Kessinger said he couldn't be specific on the policies San Miguel violated, but noted they were “alcohol related” and also related to “issues within the team and then the dorm.” He said the NAIA do not require teams to regularly test players for drug, but were going to start testing in 2005 because “there were some issues we thought we might have been facing.”

But San Miguel also wasn't meeting the team's expectations, Kessinger said.

“It was more along the lines that at that point, he was not living up to what we thought was his commitment to our football program and with the added issues in our dean's office at that point, we just decided at that juncture that he would no longer remain part of our football program,” Kessinger said. “At that point, he determined he was going to leave school anyway.”

More than a year later, San Miguel found himself facing a felony charge of possession of a controlled substance. Hill said police searched a car during a traffic stop after a shoplifting call from Gebo's feed and farm supply store located in the 2000 block of