PHOTOS: La Habra answers the challenge with win over Sunny Hills

La Habra Coach Frank Mazzotta talks to his players after Friday’s win over Sunny Hills. (Photos courtesy Jim McCormack, For OC Sports Zone)

It was the question heard around La Habra for more than a month … “what’s wrong with the Highlanders?”

“The kids heard it and I heard it,” La Habra Coach Frank Mazzotta said.

And the answer is …?

“Nothing,” Mazzotta said after the Highlanders opened their Freeway League season by rolling past host Sunny Hills, 41-14 Friday night at Buena Park.

The victory was the first in six games for La Habra, which ran a non-league gauntlet of quality opponents Upland, Bishop Amat, Eastlake, Orange and Ayala.

No one was happy with any of the losses. “We were playing really good teams, no doubt, but we were giving up control (of those games) by really doing dumb things,” Mazzotta said. “We didn’t match their intensity and execution and we lost. We just had to get better.”

Sunny Hills Coach Pete Karavedas had a similar view from the other side of the score.

“Football is about blocking and tackling and we didn’t block very well and we didn’t tackle very well,” Karvedas said, “and La Habra had a lot to do with that. Their front seven is hard to block and their skill players are hard to tackle.”

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The Highlanders are built around Justin Gil, who was the best quarterback in the league as a sophomore, and is the best quarterback in the league as a junior. During the spring season Gil was impressive with his arm and feet.

Friday night it was his ball handling that stood out even though he did throw three scoring passes.

La Habra was three and out with a net loss of two yards on its first drive but needed only one play on its second drive to establish a lead it never surrendered. Managing an option read to perfection, Gil gave the ball to C.J. Zachery who was 20 yards up field before anyone even realized he had the ball. The resulting 71-yard run gave La Habra a 7-0 lead and the Highlanders, realistically, were in control from that moment on.

Sunny Hills had two early opportunity for points but with standout kicker Mathias Brown nicked up, the Lancers twice went for first downs on 4^th-and-forever in field goal situations and came up empty.

La Habra built its lead to 21-0 at halftime on Gil’s 20-yard TD pass to Jacob Zachery and Marcus Works’ 63-yard punt return.

The lead reached 27-0 in the third on Gil’s 48-yard TD pass to Bryce Whitely before Sunny Hills picked up two TDs, the first on a 3-yard run by Paul Singleton, the second on a 46-yard pass from Max Spero to Nick Wilde. Those scores were offset by Dalton Lui’s 32-yard run and Gill’s 17 yard strike to Apodaca.

The win removes one obstacle from La Habra’s path to its 14^th league title in 15 seasons and 22^nd in the 25 years Mazzotta has been head coach. La Habra has lost only twice in its last 85 league games.

Likely La Habra’s last possible challenger is Fullerton, which took the Highlanders to overtime before losing in the teams’ spring season faceoff. Those teams meet Friday night at La Habra. Sunny Hills (3-3, 0-1) plays Buena Park Friday night.

—Courtesy Jim McCormack, For OC Sports Zone