Oilers Come Up Bigger, Beat Barons
In the Sunset League showdown, Huntington Beach’s biggest players made all the big plays.
Tony Gonzalez, Huntington Beach’s 6-foot-6, 230-pound all-everything player, caught three passes for 111 yards and a touchdown to help the Oilers, ranked third in Orange County, defeat second-ranked Fountain Valley, 14-10, in front of an overflow crowd of more than 5,000 at Huntington Beach High Friday.
Huntington Beach improved to 7-0, 4-0 in league, to take control of the league race. Fountain Valley is 6-1, 3-1.
With Huntington Beach trailing 10-7, Gonzalez made a leaping catch at the Fountain Valley four, finishing a 31-yard pass completion from quarterback Levi Schuck with 2 minutes 23 seconds remaining. Two plays later, fullback Justin Flagg scored on a three-yard touchdown run to provide the winning margin.
Fountain Valley’s last gasp ended when Huntington Beach linebacker Sean Tucker intercepted Scott Bertoni’s pass at the Baron 40 with one minute remaining. Then the Oilers ran out the clock.
Fountain Valley’s offense sputtered, thanks in large part to an impressive pass rush by the Oilers.
Nick Ziegler, a 6-6, 225-pound linebacker, sacked Bertoni twice, and made frequent visits to the Fountain Valley backfield.
The Oilers sacked Bertoni five times, and when they didn’t sack him, they hurried and harried him all night.
Bertoni, a senior, completed only five of 21 passes for 63 yards, and three of his passes were intercepted. Coming into the game, Bertoni had completed more than 63% of his passes for more than 1,000 yards with only two interceptions.
“We stunted a lot tonight because we knew they were going to pass a lot,” Ziegler said. “It was fun getting in Bertoni’s face.”
Said Gonzalez, who also plays linebacker and is being recruited by schools such as Florida State and Arizona: “Scott’s a great quarterback, but we got good pressure on him. It was Nick’s game tonight, he was the defensive star.”
On offense, Gonzalez and quarterback Levi Schuck, who completed 10 of 15 passes for 106 yards, hooked up for the big plays.
Huntington Beach took a 7-3 lead in the second quarter when Schuck found a wide-open Gonzalez for a 67-yard touchdown pass.
“Tony is the kind of player who rises to the occasion,” Huntington Beach Coach George Pascoe said. “We played really well tonight.”
Fountain Valley got its offense together for one series in the second half, driving 90 yards in 11 plays to take a 10-7 lead on a nine-yard touchdown pass from Bertoni to Brandon Leimbach with 2:28 remaining in the third quarter.
But when Joshua Holland intercepted a pass from Bertoni with 6:20 remaining, it set up the Oilers’ game-winning drive. Huntington Beach drove 57 yards in 13 plays for the winning score.
“We made some crucial mistakes, and you can’t do that against a team like Huntington Beach and expect to win,” Fountain Valley Coach George Berg said. “But we’ll regroup.”