Los Amigos starts fast and rolls past Santiago in match-up of former league rivals

Los Amigos Coach Melo Guess talks to his players after Thursday’s win. (Photos: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Two familiar league foes, Los Amigos and Santiago, met up Thursday night in the football season opener at Garden Grove.

The two teams continued their rivalry in a non-league game. It was Los Amigos night from the start. The Lobos opened with a 46-7 non-league victory over Santiago.

As part of the OC re-leaguing plan Los Amigos is in the Sigma League and Santiago in the Tango League. But both Los Amigos coach Melo Guess and Santiago Coach Doug Ovsvath wanted to continue the rivalry.

The fired up Lobos jumped out to a 26-7 lead after one quarter and did not look back. Los Amigos defeated Santiago 24-8 last season in the Garden Grove League finale.

“We’re a confident group and I think it kind of starts with me, my boys feed off my energy, I’m a high energy guy at practice and a high energy guy in the games, because I feel like the boys need it,” said Guess. “Tonight, they didn’t need it much being being (it’s) your rivals and you get up for these kind of games. But I think all the boys are buying in and trusting the process and that’s what we’ve kind of been preaching and I think that’s what you saw tonight.”

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The Lobos had a number of key offensive leaders. Senior Issac Galindo led the way scoring three touchdowns, two in the first quarter on runs of 10 and 5 yards and wound up rushing for 95 yards.

“That was expected, he played great in the scrimmage against Fountain Valley, I told him to keep that same energy. You look at his size and he doesn’t scare anyone, but he runs hard and his vision is great and I thought he did a really good job tonight,” Guess said.

Raul Cruz had two touchdowns, the first one for 30 yards to open the scoring while rushing for 93 yards and quarterback Jayvin Le threw a touchdown pass and passed for 173 yards.

Receiver Chris Flores hauled in a TD pass and had 104 receiving yards for the Lobos.

Le also picked up some yards on the ground and did well directing the offense.

“He played great. We didn’t need him to come in and be Tom Brady,” Guess said of Le. “We needed him to come in and manage the game which I thought he did well and not turn the ball over. which he was able to accomplish and he came out and made some plays, he was effective on the ground.”

Trailing 7-0, Santiago tied the game on a 59-yard TD by Ozzy Granados, but later in the quarter, the talented running back was injured and did not return, taking away a big offensive threat.

Ovsvath said it was a precautionary move to remove him.

“He broke off that real long run for us, he’s a special player for us,” the coach said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s anything too major but I think we just held him out. He wasn’t comfortable getting back in there, the trainer wasn’t comfortable getting him back in there. I’m not really sure what happened.

“I’m proud of the way the boys fought and stuck around, we just have a lot of things to clean and pick up and we got beat in every phase of the game by Los Amigos so we have a lot of things to fix and coaching staff is going to get together and focus on Westminster and see what we can do.”

Senior quarterback James Gonzalez led the Cavalier offense, rushing for 106 yards and passing for 47.

“James Gonzalez is an incredible leader,” Ovsvath said. “He’s always out there fighting doing the best he can and leading his team and this year we’re even lucky enough to play him on the defensive side of the ball, he’s out there just flying around.”

Los Amigos led 26-7 at halftime and 32-7 going into the fourth quarter.

Galindo had his final score of the game on a 1-yard TD run and Hector Arroyo had a 1-yard TD run in the final minute.

“It’s a big one, it’s a rivalry and we just needed to get it done,” said Galindo. “It’s nice to be able to play a team that we already played in our league and have a good game against them.”

Guess was also happy with the defensive effort, which was particularly effective against the pass.

“We brought in a new defensive staff this year, I’ve been doing double duty the last three years calling the offense and defense and I was relieved tonight to only focus on the offensive side,” Guess said. “The defense did their job tonight, gave us great field position and we did our job on the other end.”

—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com