PREP FOOTBALL : Pacific Coast League : Orange’s Resurgence Continues in 26-0 Win

Orange High School, for years a Century League doormat in football, is discovering this season what it’s like to step all over other teams.

With Thursday night’s 26-0 victory over Trabuco Hills, the Panthers improved to 3-0 in the newly formed Pacific Coast League and 5-3 overall.

Orange, which was 0-10 in 1985, is doing more than winning games this year. It is winning big. The Panthers opened league play with a 23-7 victory over Woodbridge and then defeated Laguna Hills last week, 31-8.

And then there was Thursday night’s game, in which the Panthers thoroughly dominated the Mustangs in front of 400 fans in Orange’s Fred Kelly Stadium.

A change of scenery has done wonders for the Panthers. No longer is their schedule loaded with teams such as Santa Ana, Foothill and El Modena. And no longer do the Panthers enter games wondering not if they’ll win, but if they will score.

“Last year, after we started losing, the guys would get down and say that they couldn’t win,” said Orange running back Paul Maund, who rushed for 166 yards and 3 touchdowns in 27 carries. “Now, it’s a total change of attitude. We go out and try to win.”

Orange played well for one half, but that was more than enough to defeat Trabuco Hills.

Maund scored on runs of 4, 38 and 4 yards in the first quarter, and the Panthers added another touchdown in the second quarter on quarterback Mike Stock’s 25-yard scoring pass to Robert Glover to take a commanding 26-0 halftime lead.

The Mustangs moved the ball into Panther territory just once in the first half--on the last play of the second quarter--and once in the second half. Trabuco Hills managed just 81 yards total offense.

Offensively, Orange looked good in the first half but fell apart in the second. The Panthers, after gaining 215 total yards in the first half, committed four turnovers--three fumbles and an interception--in the second.

Maund, Orange County’s fourth-rated rusher who ran for 153 yards in the first half to surpass the 1,000-yard mark, had just 13 yards in 8 carries after halftime.

The Panthers may need to play well for an entire game to defeat their last two league opponents, Laguna Beach and Costa Mesa.

“I’m not sure why the game got so ugly in the second half,” Orange Coach Mark McMahon said. “I don’t know if they made some adjustments or we just lost our concentration. We didn’t seem as crisp in the second half.”

They looked fine in the first. On the Panthers’ first possession, Maund swept around the right side for a 31-yard gain. He then scored on a four-yard run.

After Orange defensive lineman Steve Ward stripped the ball from Trabuco Hills running back Ray Walters, Maund took a handoff and raced 39 yards up the middle for a touchdown and a 13-0 lead.

Later in the first quarter, after another Mustang turnover that gave the Panthers the ball at the Trabuco Hills 13-yard line, Maund scored on a four-yard run.

Stock got into the action in the second quarter when he teamed with Glover on a 25-yard, play-action pass over the middle for a touchdown.

Trabuco Hills quarterback Brett Miller, who had completed 57 of 123 passes for 1,059 yards in seven games, threw for just 58 yards by completing 7 of 23 attempts Thursday night. The Mustangs’ leading rusher was Joe Scienski, who gained 52 yards in 12 carries.