Villa Park Escapes, but Barely : Football: Bolsa Grande, routed by Spartans the past two seasons, stay within 7-0 this time.

There seems to be a new, improved football era dawning at Bolsa Grande High.

No, the Matadors didn’t win their nonleague season opener against Villa Park Thursday night. They lost, 7-0, in front of 1,200 at El Modena High. But they managed to stay in the game until the final gun, and that in itself is nearly a monumental achievement for a team that last season wasn’t altogether the doormat of the Garden Grove League--at 3-7--but pretty close to it.

The past two seasons, Villa Park (1-0) left the Matadors (0-1) for dead, 45-0 in 1989 and 43-21 in 1990. So perhaps it wasn’t unjustified to expect another blowout. But Bolsa Grande and its new coach, Jim Wright, went into the game with the idea of not only erasing those awful memories but of flat out winning.

“I hate to lose. I thought we should have won the game,” said Wright, who came to Bolsa Grande after one year at West Covina High and several years before that at various high schools in Arizona. “We did a lot of things well.”

But Villa Park did things a little bit better.

The Spartans got the only score in the second quarter when their offensive line started to open big holes during a 79-yard drive that began late in the opening period and ended with a one-yard plunge by tailback Ryan Tsui on third and goal with 8 minutes 18 seconds left in the half.

Tsui had two big plays during the drive, gaining 19 and 11 yards on successive rushes in Matador territory, but it was fullback Paul Velo who set up the touchdown with an 18-yard run behind left guard to the Bolsa Grande 19. Velo was the game’s leading rusher with 72 yards.

Though the Bolsa Grande defense did an excellent job of containing Villa Park, the Matador offense relied almost strictly on the run and wasn’t able to develop an attack balanced enough to create major problems. In fact, Bolsa Grande quarterback Bryan Taylor did not attempt either of his two passes until the second half.

Taylor did lead Bolsa Grande in rushing with 67 yards, but most of the Matador drives stalled before they could seriously threaten.

Wright said the Villa Park defensive alignment created problems for his offense.

“We thought they were going to run the 4-3 because that’s what they ran against Bolsa last year, but they ran the 5-2 tonight,” Wright said. “That screwed up our blocking.”