No. 1 St. Margaret’s 56, No. 2 Maranatha 14

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Welcome to the Week 2 version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Or, The GBU, for short.

The story of the game was the injuries to Matt Schilz and Alex Clash of Maranatha in the first quarter. The score was 7-0 and it looked close (St. Margaret’s had the edge, but it didn’t look like a blowout was about to occur). Then the two players go down -- Schilz on a horrific tackle when he tried to run for a first down on third and eight and Clash on a defensive play the next series.

‘The wind came out of their sails,’ at that point, St. Margaret’s Coach Harry Welch said.

St. Margaret’s went on to score on that drive. The Tartans’ defense stopped the Minutemen on their next two drives. On the first punt, Maranatha had a bad snap, and on the second, the punt was blocked. Both miscues were converted into touchdowns.

Game over.

‘What can you say? Life is not fair,’ Minutemen Coach Joel Murphy said afterward.

Early reports on the injuries are not good. As soon as we learn anything tomorrow, we’ll let you know.

Onto The GBU...

The Good: The entire St. Margaret’s program. From its new coach, Harry Welch, to the ball boy. The Tartans were better than the depleted Minutemen in every single aspect of the game. They controlled the line of scrimmage, played better defense, made more big plays, etc., etc., etc. I was talking to running back Hunter Steffien after the game. He had two rushing touchdowns, and said this Tartan team is nastier than the one last year that won the CIF-SS Northeast Division title. St. Margaret’s has always been a finesse team that has been gifted athletically, but that’s not all this year. ‘This team is nasty,’ Steffien said.

The Bad: The injuries. You always hate to see injuries. Schilz’s injury is the worst I’ve ever witness. It reminded me of the hit Willis McGahee took in the Miami-Ohio State national championship game a few years ago. You just hope they make speedy recoveries. I’ll be rooting for Marantha the rest of this season. I know, I know, we are not supposed to be biased. And I will remain neutral in almost all of my reporting. However, the Minutement experienced more adversity in one quarter than many teams experience in one season. Good luck the rest of the way, guys.

The Ugly: The field. I talked to enough people from Maranatha and St. Margaret’s and both said the field is OK, but-- and please keep in mind I’m not a landscape engineer, so I could be wrong-- the field did not look good. The field is new and it was nowhere near the quality of any of the best artificial turfs I’ve stepped on. It doesn’t help that the St. Margaret’s head master said it took ‘something like 70 days’ to have the field installed. Again, I don’t know much about artificial turf, but I know they need to have more cushion than what this field had.

Los Altos won 39-7. South Hills lost to La Habra 31-6. Charter Oak beat La Mirada 28-0. More on those games and the St. Margaret’s-Maranatha game tomorrow in Three-and-Out. Make sure to check back then.

- Jaime Cardenas