THE HIGH SCHOOLS / STEVE ELLING : Untimely Flags Spell Less-Than-Banner Ending for Buena’s Scott

Last Sunday at the crack of dawn, Buena High’s Rick Scott and numerous others in the football coaching fraternity converged on Southern Section headquarters. The order of the day was to sort through the first-round playoff seedings.

Scott walked into the section office in Cerritos and headed toward a congregation of his peers hovering around a table that was loaded with coffee and doughnuts. He spied Thousand Oaks Coach Bob Richards.

“I said, ‘How’s it going, Bob?’ ” Scott said. “And he says, ‘I’ll tell you how it’s going. I just bit into one of these doughnuts and lost a gold cap.’ ”

Scott knows the feeling. With 4 minutes 37 seconds left in Buena’s 21-7 road loss to Dana Hills in the first round of the Division II playoffs, Scott found himself seated in the stands next to the driver of the team bus, munching an apple and mulling the gold flags that had capped Buena’s season.

Scott was dejected, ejected, and according to his account of the way officials treated his team in the fourth quarter, anything but respected. Scott took a bite out of the Big Orange on Friday night, and it left a bitter aftertaste.

Scott, an affable type who said he had never drawn a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct in his nine years as a varsity coach, drew two such penalties in the final five minutes as Dana Hills drove upfield to take a 21-7 lead. As a result, Scott was automatically ejected.

The first flag came after Buena had drawn a roughing-the-kicker penalty on a Dana Hills field-goal attempt from the 25-yard line. Scott said he believes the kicker tripped over a fallen Buena player. The penalty gave Dana Hills a first down inside the 10, and Scott called a timeout and walked out to console his defense.

Scott’s lecture to his players centered on the quality of the officiating, he said, and a parting remark to one official earned Scott his first unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. After Dana Hills scored, a fight broke out on the conversion kick. One player from each team was ejected and both coaches ran onto the field to help break up the extracurricular activity, he said.

Scott again directed a few well-chosen remarks toward the officials, whom he insisted had let the game get out of control, and drew a flag as he walked away. Scott claims that no profanity was uttered. “I knew the rule,” he said. “I knew if I got another one, I was gone.”

Scott, interestingly, is a basketball official in the off-season--which began only too soon.

“I know the situation they’re in,” he said of coaches. “As a referee, I never throw a coach out of a game unless he’s totally out of control.”

Razzle-dazzle: As it was so aptly described by one wag, it was a once-in-a-Centurion play.

Saugus lost to Loyola, 34-24, in a Division I game Friday that was closer than the score indicated. For Saugus, it was too close, as in a matter of inches.

The Centurions dominated the first half and took a 14-7 lead with 17 seconds remaining in the second quarter. On the ensuing kickoff, Loyola’s deep return man, Matt Vanis, pulled in the ball at the one. One of his feet was on the goal line as he caught the ball, which came inches from being ruled an automatic touchback for crossing the plane of the end zone.

Loyola’s return team circled tightly around Vanis at the 10 in a play dubbed “Round ‘Em Up.” Cub players then broke from what looked like a rugby scrum in a hunched-over position, as if each was carrying the football.

Vanis vanished. He had, in fact, handed the ball to reserve running back Chris Econn, who slipped away undetected, rolled upfield and broke into a full sprint. His 90-yard touchdown run tied the score and leveled Saugus.

A fluke? So it seems.

“That play usually doesn’t work,” Econn said. “Not even in practice.”

Recipe for disaster: Can domination lead to a loss? Some folks at Rio Mesa believe it can. At least one believes it already has.

In Rio Mesa’s 10-7 upset of previously unbeaten Royal on Friday, the Highlanders marched down the field on their first possession and took a 7-0 lead. Royal, the top-seeded team in Division II, hardly broke a sweat.

Rio Mesa assistant George Contreras, the team’s defensive coordinator, believes it sounded Royal’s death knell. The Highlanders didn’t score again, perhaps because they assumed the whole game would proceed in similar fashion.

Contreras explained that a highly touted team can suffer a sudden letdown after scoring first. Royal entered the game with a record of 10-0; Rio Mesa made the playoffs as a wild-card entry at 7-3.

“You score and think the rest of the game’s going to go the same route,” Contreras said. “And that’s the nature of an upset.”