Rancho Alamitos Routs Mission Viejo : Football: Byrd rushes for 155 yards, Vickers runs for 144 yards and four touchdowns in Vaqueros’ 31-13 victory.

What many already knew about Rancho Alamitos of the grossly underrated Garden Grove League became painfully clear to one of the heralded football teams from the South County Thursday night: The Vaqueros will clobber you relentlessly.

Rancho Alamitos, ranked sixth in the county, controlled the line of scrimmage, the running game and everything else that mattered to defeat No. 3 Mission Viejo, 31-13, in a nonleague game in front of 2,500 at Bolsa Grande High.

The Vaqueros (2-1), whose only loss was the forfeit of a 42-0 season-opening victory over Troy for the use of an ineligible player, got its powerful running game going from the start and coasted to the easy victory.

Fullback Leon Vickers ran for 144 yards and four touchdowns and tailback Jeff Byrd rushed for a game-high 155 yards in 23 carries behind a surging offensive line that dominated the Mission Viejo (2-1) defensive line.

The Vaquero offensive line, led by center Nestor Alvarez, tackles Jeremiah Ross and Josh Ferguson, and guards Richard Saragosa and Adam Maldonado, gave the Mission Viejo defensive line led by tackles Gary Winsor and Paul Young all it could handle.

Vickers, Byrd and quarterback Marshall Brown, who carried seven times for 27 yards, broke occasionally to the outside, but picked up the bulk of their yardage after the offensive line opened sizable holes or simply pushed back the Mission Viejo linemen.

“They took our option away, so they gave us the middle,” Rancho Alamitos Coach Mark Miller said. “We took the middle.”

Vickers, for one, took what they gave him and then some. The senior scored on runs of one, two, 61 and 28 yards. He had only 36 yards rushing in the first half because Byrd did most of the damage over that span with 111 of his yards, but pounded through the Mission Viejo defense in the last two quarters for 108 yards rushing.

Mission Viejo, which had only 140 total yards before a 61-yard pass play from Jake Londe to Brian Snowden with no time left in the game, couldn’t move the ball all night. Before that pass play, the longest gain for the Diablos came on a 36-yard run by Erick Fielding in the first quarter.

The Diablos scored their first touchdown on a five-yard pass play from Brad Weekes to Mike Myers in the second quarter and when Bill Pedigo recovered Snowden’s fumble in the end zone on the last play of the game.