Huntington Beach Overcomes Miscues

When Westminster transformed a turnover into an early touchdown, Huntington Beach Coach Mike Dodd started to wonder if a painful pattern of the previous two weeks was going to repeat.

Twice his Oilers had fallen 14 points behind in the first quarter and couldn’t recover.

But host Huntington Beach rallied over the final three quarters to win, 38-7, in a nonleague game Friday against Westminster.

Huntington Beach was able to pull away thanks mostly to a strong ground game.

Leading the attack was senior tailback Jason Locklin, who had 125 yards and three touchdowns in 20 carries.

Locklin scored on runs of one, five and 19 yards. He has 440 yards this season.

Huntington Beach also got a big effort from quarterback Dave Van Hoorebeke, who completed six of eight passes for 104 yards and also rushed for 53 yards, mostly out of the option. He had his team’s longest rush of the game, 31 yards.

“We put a lot of demands on our running backs this week,” Dodd said. “We came out unbalanced and just tried to establish the running game. We thought we matched up well to do that. . . . It was nice that things went our way.”

Things hardly started well for Huntington Beach, though.

Westminster’s Brad Davis intercepted Van Hoorebeke’s first pass after it was tipped at the Westminster 43.

The Lions, keyed by a 40-yard run by tailback Sparky Kale, drove for the touchdown. Kale scored on a one-yard dive to put Westminster up 7-0.

“At that point,” Dodd said, “I didn’t know which way things would go.”

Eric Yang tied it, 7-7, on a one-yard run and Huntington Beach went ahead, 14-7, when Locklin scored from five yards out with 3 minutes 34 seconds left.

Van Hoorebeke had completions of 11, 28, four and 19 yards during the drive. He completed six passes in a row at one point.

The victory ends a three-game losing streak for Huntington Beach (2-3) but extends Westminster’s to four games.

Westminster (1-4) rested some starters in the second half, including quarterback Shaun Spradlin, who took a hard hit in the second quarter.

Kale was held to 48 yards in nine carries, but has gained 627 yards for the season.