OC FOOTBALL NOTES: Laguna Hills coach notches his first opening win at school

Laguna Hills Coach Mike Maceranka watches his team warm up Friday.

Laguna Hills football Coach Mike Maceranka didn’t quite know what to expect from his team in the first game against University Friday night.

But the Hawks came through with a 46-6 victory over the Trojans in the beginning of Maceranka’s third year as the head coach. The Hawks were 2-7 last year.

“This is my first win as an opener since I’ve been at Laguna Hills, so it’s pretty awesome,” Maceranka said after the game.

“We got talent this year. Now, we just have to put it together every week. We have to stay healthy.”

RELATED STORY: It was Hawks’ night

The victory spoiled the debut of new University Coach Scott Meyer.

“They played hard,” Maceranka said. “It’s just like two years ago for me, that first game is a hard deal to get figured out.”

University defeated Laguna Hills 7-6 in Maceranka’s debut at Laguna Hills in 2016. He coached at Segestrom before that.

Laguna Hills plays Marina Thursday night at Westminster.

UNIVERSITY BACK AT IT NEXT DAY

University’s football team was scheduled to be back at practice Saturday in preparation for Thursday’s game against Orange at Modena.

“We’re going to watch the films and try and correct a lot of those mistakes and get back on the field because it’s a short week and we play Orange Thursday. They’re really good too,” Meyer, the Uni coach, said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.

“They made some plays, but we were real sloppy, there is a lot of stuff we can clean up.”

Orange is 0-1 and lost to Garden Grove, 21-18 last week.

PACKED HOUSE AT SEGERSTROM

As expected, Segerstrom’s football stadium was filled on Friday night for the annual Godinez-Segerstrom game. In fact, before the game an announcement was sent over Twitter that the game had officially sold out.

It’s great to see the students of both schools representing their teams.

WARRIORS MOVE UP IN RANKINGS

Woodbridge’s football team lost to a talented El Modena team 14-7 on Friday night. But the Warriors moved up in the Division 8 rankings this week and are now No. 2 behind Santa Ana.

Woodbridge continues its challenging schedule Friday night when it hosts Fountain Valley at University.

PRESS BOX AT UNIVERSITY IMPROVED

Irvine Unified School Distict officials promised they would replace the windows that were so hard to see out of at the University stadium and they did over the off-season. That renovation has made the announcers, scorekeepers and the media very happy. The windows can now be raised providing a much better view.

NORTHWOOD FOOTBALL TEAM HAS A BYE

Northwood’s football team, 1-1, is off this week before playing on Friday, Sept. 7 at Santa Ana Valley.

“We have a bye so we have two weeks to work on correcting our errors,” Northwood Coach Pete Mitchell said after last week’s game. We will be a better team each week; we just need experience.”

Got football news? Please send to Tim Burt; email timburt@ocsportszone.com