lrvine takes second to Rancho Christian in summer passing tourney

Irvine High quarterback Marc Filia reacts after throwing a touchdown in the championship game.

Irvine High’s football team wound up second in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes South Coast Challenge, falling to Rancho Christian 21-19 in the championship game Saturday at Irvine Stadium.

“It’s what we talk about with our guys all the time,”  said Irvine Coach Erik Terry. “We gave ourselves an opportunity to win at the end. We just couldn’t finish. But that’s a lot of football and I thought we competed well all day long.”

“We had a lot of guys who played. We were missing a few of our starters on both sides of the ball. The great thing is their back-ups played a lot of football today and got a chance to get better.”

To see the slide show, please click on the first photo.

Irvine went 3-0 in pool play and was 5-1 on the day. In pool play Irvine defeated Crean Lutheran 26-6, Capo Valley Christian 28-6 and Verbum Dei 23-3. In bracket play, the Vaqueros topped Bolsa Grande 30-12 and Saddleback Valley Christian 16-6.

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In the other final game Saturday, Capo Valley Christian, led by Rick Curtis, defeated Verbum Dei 23-3 to win the consolation title.

Marc Filia had a solid day for Irvine throwing touchdown passes to Ethan Shank, Jacob Sears and Cade Zimmerman in the championship game. Terry said that back-up Beck Moss also three three touchdowns on the day.

Filia hits Ethan Shank with a quick TD strike. pic.twitter.com/Y7WnfsjCJl

— Irvine Vaqueros (@VaqueroFootball) July 21, 2018

“It was a really good day; we got a lot of guys some work,” Filia added. “That’s what summer is about, getting guys work and getting them familiar with the playbook. A lot of guys stepped up and did a good job. Summer is a time to get better. A lot of things change when the big boys get in front of us. But we want to get familiar with our playbook and get ready for game one.”

Crean Lutheran, under first year coach Randall Reynoso, also competed in the tournament. Reynoso has been the Saints’ offensive coordinator the last two years.

“They did a really good job hosting this event so we’re very thankful to them,” Reynoso said. “Our boys tend to start slow, and then we kind of get better as the day goes. I was very pleased with our effort. We put in a brand new offense, brand new defense and brand new special teams so they’re adapting on the fly and so far, we’re controlling what we can control, the effort and the compete factor.”