I told an Alemany player to his face he was going to lose

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

I suffered from an acute case of foot-in-mouth disease while of the sidelines of the Birmingham-Taft game Wednesday night.

While walking on Taft’s side of the field at halftime, I started talking to a father and son about the game. At some point, the father asked me how I thought Alemany would do in its Western Division quarterfinal against second-seeded Dominguez on Friday night.

My response was something along the lines of, ‘I don’t think the Warriors have a chance in this one,’ which immediately brought a hearty laugh from the father and a head-shaking smile from the son. It turns out the kid was Alemany junior WR/DB Nick Alcantara.

I immediately went into damage control, saying stuff like, ‘Hey, you guys have had a great turnaround season,’ and ‘go ahead and tell all your teammates that The Times’ guy said right to you’re face, ‘You’re going to lose.’ That’ll motivate them,’ but it was all too late. They knew how I really felt.

Fortunately, the Alcantaras were cool with my prediction. Nick said he knows everybody’s pegging them as the underdog against defending champion Dominguez and that’s the kind of reputation the Warriors have gotten used to this season.

And who knows? I erroneously picked Alemany to lose against St. Paul and Chaminade, and it put up one heck of an effort against Crespi. Tonight’s game could be another Warriors’ shocker.

I’m just glad Alcantara didn’t go up into the stands and fetch some of his friends to help me change my mind. Apparently, several Alemany players were at the game, including RB Antonio Bray. They were all there cheering on their fellow Northridge Knights alumni, which includes Birmingham RB Milton Knox.

Maybe next time I’ll be more careful with what I say on the sidelines. But probably not.

-- Austin Knoblauch