Portola and Beckman scheduled to meet for second straight week after schedules shuffled

Portola players take the field for Thursday’s game with Beckman. (File photo Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone)

Portola and Beckman football teams, who both lost Pacific Coast Conference opponents because of injuries resulting in cancellations, will have a rematch on Friday, April 2 at Portola, head coaches Peter Abe (Portola) and Marcello Giuliano (Beckman) said Tuesday.

It will the second week in a row the teams will face each other. Beckman defeated Portola 27-7 last Thursday night at Tustin in a nonleague game.

The announcement comes after the cancellation of two other games in the conference due to injuries. The abbreviated five-game season is scheduled to last until the middle of April.

Portola was scheduled to play Northwood in the opener of the Pacific Hills League. But the TImberwolves had to cancel the game due to injuries. Beckman was scheduled to play University in a Pacific Valley League game but that game was cancelled because of injuries to University.

The Irvine-Woodbridge Pacific Valley League game scheduled for Friday was also cancelled because of injuries to Woodbridge. Irvine Coach Tom Ricci is trying to fill the spot with a nonleague game for his team.

Coaches at Portola and Beckman said they were looking at getting their players a chance to play, not knowing what the remainder of the abbreviated five-week schedule will look like.

Friday’s rematch will be another non-league game since Beckman and Portola are in different leagues. After the cancellation of the University game, Beckman had lined up a nonleague game with Leuzinger Thursday, but that game will not be played.

Portola Coach Peter Abe, after returning to receive his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccination, got a call from Northwood Coach Michael Stewart who said the TImberwolves would be unable to play Friday in the Pacific Valley League opener.

“As soon as I got done with the second dose, I got a call from Northwood that they had sustained some pretty significant injuries over the last two or three weeks so they weren’t going to be able to field a varsity team for this coming week,” Abe said.

Abe then began making some calls to coaches to get advice about where to go from there.

“All of them said try and keep things in perspective and what this whole thing is about,” Abe said. “It’s getting kids an opportunity to play. It wasn’t too long ago that we weren’t playing at all.

The advice from coaches was: “Whenever you can take it, take it. Because these next two or three weeks are not a promise for anybody,” Abe said.

Abe and Giuliano, the Beckman coach, then talked about a possible rematch Friday at Portola and agreed to move forward.

“We took some time to think it over between the two of us and we came to the conclusion to lock up a round two game between the two of us,” Abe said. “Again, it’s another chance to get out there and play the game against a quality opponenent that it didn’t turn out the way we wanted last week but I think the game was much closer than the game led on. It should be an exciting one. We all know how difficult it is to play a team twice.”

Abe said he was aware of other cancellations including the Irvine-Woodbridge game scheduled for Friday.

“It’s more important that we make that commitment early on, so we know we have a guaranteed game and they they have a guaranteed game and I’m happy we made the call when we did,” Abe said. “We don’t want to take anything for granted, and some coaches that I really respect and I was able to reach out to today reminded us it about the kids.

“It doesn’t matter who or where, we want them to look back at this and say we did everything to give them the best opportunity to compete and be successful this year.”

Giuliano said he was pleased the rematch could be arranged during an unprecedented spring season.

“I didn’t anticpate things would go this way, city-wide certainly,” Giuliano said. “The bottom line is that Coach Abe and I are just happy to have found a game for our guys because there is very little out there (other opponents). It’s not ideal certainly to go back to back but our kids get to play and it will be a great environment over at their place.

“I’ve been telling my people all along patience and flexibility, I didn’t know it would be this much patience or this much flexibility. But everyone in our program and Peter’s program is having the same goal of just getting the kids to play as much as we can.”

Giuliano said his team has also suffered numerous injuries during its first two games.

It appears it’s week by week for Woodbridge, University and Northwood in terms of future games. No CIF playoffs will be held during the spring season.

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