Toreadors Get to City Section Final on a Pass

How bad were playing conditions Friday night for the Taft-Sylmar City Section 4-A Division semifinal game?

Water bottles were used to rinse out mouths filled with mud.

Taft Coach Troy Starr looked ready to go bass fishing in his bright yellow rain jacket.

Taft center Clint Evans kept searching for a dry towel and wondering what it would take to make a simple snap to quarterback Steve Alvarado, who fumbled six times.

“It’s the hardest thing I did in my life,” Evans said. “What can I say--it was a torrential downpour.”

In end, each team scored one touchdown, but it was a two-point conversion pass from holder K.C. Bounds to Sedric Hurns that lifted the Toreadors (12-0) to an 8-6 victory.

“They had one lucky play,” Sylmar defensive back Shaun Avalos said. “Otherwise, it would be 6-6 and we’d be playing in overtime.”

Except it wasn’t luck that Bounds found Hurns. It’s a play practiced every day by Taft at practice. The ball was fumbled by Bounds on the snap for a conversion kick. He yelled, “Fire,” rolled right and found Hurns open in the end zone.

“It feels great,” said Bounds, who lost the starting quarterback job to Alvarado when the season began.

Starr, who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and used to play in snow and rain, admitted that Friday’s weather and field conditions were pretty bad.

“This is extreme, even for Cleveland,” he said.

But players ignored the rain.

“We played our hearts out,” Avalos said.

“It was fun,” Taft linebacker Tyler Brennan said. “It took away the power of players. When you hit somebody, they didn’t have power to push off.”

Said Starr: “Kids just played outrageous and their kids played great, too. If it had been a dry field, it would have been the same type of game--a war to the last second.”

One Taft player who seemed to enjoy the conditions was cornerback Airabin Justin, a transfer from Kirkland, Wash. He played in rain plenty of times last year.

He made two tackles for losses Friday and kept Avalos from getting loose in the secondary.

It was so wet that checks to pay the chain crew had to be dried out in the P.E. office. The game was well attended, with fans almost filling bleachers on both sides of the field.

Alvarado was the player struggling the most. The junior quarterback fumbled on three consecutive snaps at one point in the second quarter.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “It was who lasted until the end that was going to win.”

Last year, Taft lost to San Pedro in the City 4-A final at the Coliseum. Alvarado remembers taking home a leaf from the Coliseum. He put it in his locker as a reminder.

“I’m not taking a leaf from the Coliseum,” he said. “This time it’s a ring.”