Leave it to a football coach to find a silver lining in a loss. That is exactly what El Camino head coach Rustin Mayorga took away from last week’s 43-21 loss to Jefferson.
“As much as I hate losing, we needed it (that loss to the Grizzlies) to happen,” Mayorga said. “It was a reality check.”
Looks like the Colts head man was right. Going on the road to Mills Friday night, El Camino re-established its running game, got a number of big plays in the passing game and then leaned on its defense to beat the Vikings, 21-0.
“It’s not easy to win,” Mayorga said. “It’s definitely good to win, but we gotta get back to work.”
It certainly wasn’t easy for El Camino (2-1 PAL Lake, 3-2 overall) as the defenses for both teams started out strong. Mills (1-1, 3-2) picked up a first down on the first play from scrimmage when sophomore quarterback Brian Lourenco hit Kosta Jada for a 10-yard gain.
But the Vikings eventually punted.
El Camino picked up a pair of first downs on its first possession of game, but the Colts also eventually punted and gave Mills a short field.
The El Camino punt went only 17 yards to give Mills the ball at the Colts’ 40-yard line. But the Vikings could not do anything with it as they turned the ball over on downs.
In the third quarter, after El Camino scored its third touchdown, Vikings’ return man Shamal Kumar gave his team excellent field position, taking the ensuing kickoff 43 yards to the El Camino 33.
Again, the Colts’ defense held firm, forcing Mills to turn the ball over downs. A pair of turnovers deep in El Camino territory thwarted two other potential scoring chances for the Vikings, as they just could not seem to connect on that one play that would keep the drive alive.
“We couldn’t get it in the end zone,” said Mills head coach Nick Lobao.
Mills, for the most part, played solid on defense. But El Camino put together back-to-back-to-back scoring drives, spanning the second and third quarters, to take the win.
A Mills punt midway through the second quarter gave the Colts the ball on their own 18-yard line. Facing a third down, senior quarterback Quentin Bromaghim threw an incomplete pass, but the drive was kept alive because of a defensive pass interference penalty.
It was a big call because on the next play, running back Noah David exploded 61 yards for a touchdown.
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It capped a big half for David, individually, and the El Camino offense as a whole. Last week, the Colts managed just 105 rushing yards. Friday, they had 160 by halftime, with David leading the way. He finished with 118 yards on 12 carries.
He didn’t touch the ball in the second half, but Leo Mejia provided some relief as he rushed for 63 yards on 14 second-half carries.
“[David has been] getting a lot of carries,” Mayorga said. “But we thought it was a good opportunity to get our other guys in the game.”
All told, the Colts finished with 239 yards rushing for the game.
“That’s our identity,” Mayorga said.
But the Colts were hardly one-dimensional. Bromaghim completed 9 of 13 passes for 127 yards and a score as he completed his last five passes of the game.
The big one came just before halftime. After Ethan Samoananglo Langi recovered a Mills fumble on the Colts’ 22-yard line, the El Camino offense went to work with 3:41 left in the first half. After a pair of David runs to open the drive, Bromaghim hit Raimer Guevarra for a 16-yard gain, found Markson Jacques for seven yards and a David screen pass picked up 13 more yards.
When Bromaghim found Guevarra again for 11 yards, the Colts had first down at the Mills 29-yard line.
With under 30 seconds to play, Bromaghim took the snap and launched a long pass to the end zone, where Jacques hauled it in for a 29-yard scoring strike and a 14-0 El Camino lead at halftime.
The Colts got the second-half kickoff and promptly marched for their third touchdown in three drives. Starting at their own 42, the Colts needed seven plays to go 58 yards, picking up a personal foul-horse collar tackle along the way. The drive was capped by a Mejia three-yard run for the 21-0 lead.
Neither team could muster much offensively after that, but the Vikings did put together its best drive of the night late in the fourth quarter. Starting from their own 46, Mills got a 15-yard facemask penalty to put the Colts in business at the El Camino 31. The Viking got the ball all the way down to the 1-yard line before El Camino’s Shea Tolosa came up with an interception in the end zone to end the threat.
The Colts then ran out the clock to end the game.
Despite the loss, Mills’ Lobao believed his team played OK. Lourenco completed 17 of 27 passes for 98 yards. Jayden Carmona caught five passes for 36 yards, while Valentino Maza was the Vikings’ leading rusher, finishing with 54 yards on 10 carries.
“It didn’t feel like a 21-nothing loss,” Lobao said.
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