Sunny Hills seniors celebrate after Friday’s victory over Fullerton. (Photos courtesy Jim McCormack, For OC Sports Zone)
It is a tradition on the Sunday following the end of the regular high school football season for coaches to gather at the CIF office in Los Alamitos for the announcement of playoff pairings.
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Sunny Hills coach Pete Karavedas isn’t one of the traditionalists.
“I used to do that,” Karavedas explained. “Now I just sit in front of my computer at home and hit ‘refresh.’ ”
When there is news relative to Sunny Hills, it will be good. Coupled with Friday’s 48-16 win over city rival Troy and Aliso Niguel’s 26-21 loss to Trabuco Hills, the Lancers should receive the No. 1 seed in Division 8.
And Karavedas feels good about his Lancers, who finished with an 8-2 regular season record for the third season of the year and also emphatically claimed, for the second year in a row, the Battle of the City crown after dismantling city rivals Fullerton and Troy on all three levels.
“I like the way we’re playing right now,” he said following Friday’s win at Buena Park High, which should be the site of the Lancers’ first playoff game next Friday.
Friday, before an enthusiastic Senior Night crowd, the Lancers got four rushing touchdowns from workhorse running back Jun Ahn, who has 23 TDs on the season, and a football hat trick from Brandon Roberts who scored on an interception return, a pass reception and run.
Ahn scored twice in the first quarter, the first on a play where he regained his balance after nearly being tackled for a short gain and sprinted 21 yards for a score. His other scoring runs were of 4, 12 and 10 yards.
While the final score depicts a one-sided game, the Lancers did have to overcome some unsettling moments. Trailing 14-0 in the second quarter, Troy, led by industrious quarterback Roman Arriaga, appeared to score on a fourth-down lateral-pass play that caught the Sunny Hills by surprise.
Officials ruled, though, that the first pass, which had to be a lateral, was a forward pass. Two forward passes are illegal on a play and it is a loss of down infraction so Troy not only lost the TD but possession of the ball as well.
Sunny Hills’ immediate reaction was to rocket down the field inside the Troy 20 before a fumble ended that opportunity. Moments later, Arriaga, under heavy pressure from the Lancer pass rush, hurried a pass over the middle which Roberts intercepted and returned 25 yards a score and a 21-0 advantage.
Arriaga, who would run 62 yards for a score late in the game, got the Warriors on the board late in the second quarter with a 6-yard pass to Matthew Frisbee and the Warriors added a safety on a bad punt snap in the third quarter.
Those plays were offset by Ahn’s fourth TD in the third quarter and TDs from Roberts, the first on a 47-yard pass from quarterback Luke Duxbury, the second on a 51-yard run, both in the fourth period.
Story courtesy Jim McCormack for OC Sports Zone
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