Brea Hands El Dorado Its First Loss of Season

Since losing their first five games of last season, the El Dorado Hawks had won nine of their last 10, dating back to the start of league play last year. And there has been no secret to their success.

“We’ve been winning with a total team effort,” Coach Rick Jones said. “That’s offense, defense and special teams. We’ve had a lot of guys doing well; we knew we had to if we were going to be successful.”

On Thursday against Brea Olinda, the Hawks had another team effort--mostly bad. El Dorado (4-1) was flat from the opening kickoff and was flattened by Brea, 26-13 in front of about 3,200 at Brea.

The Wildcats (4-1) held El Dorado to minus-30 yards rushing and hounded Hawks quarterback Mitch Nord (213 yards), sacking him six times and holding him to one touchdown pass, a 10-yarder to Brandon Fischer in the third quarter.

At the end of the game, Nord was on the sidelines after another rugged tackle, watching receiver Larry Olivarez complete a meaningless 24-yard touchdown pass to Carlos Rasch on the game’s final play.

The Wildcats, on the other hand, had their way with the El Dorado defense. Scott Lieng rushed for 141 yards, including a 65-yard touchdow run in the fourth quarter. Quarterback Travis Blood passed for 203 yards, and receiver Rasuli Wilson scored twice in the first half on a 17-yard reverse, and a 79-yard screen pass that gave Brea a 19-0 first half lead.

“This win has to give us a lot of confidence going into league play next week,” Brea Olinda Coach Jon Looney said

“We have to cut down the penalties.”

Along with Webster’s touchdowns, Scott Davis kicked two first-half field goals of 31 and 36 yards.

“Take nothing away from Brea. They’re good and they played well,” Jones said. “But we also did not play well. It was the most flat I’ve seen us in a while. We didn’t pick up the blitzes, we didn’t do other things.”

It would have been hard for Jones to find anything good to say about the Hawks’ play, and especially in the first half.

El Dorado’s trouble’s began when a Nord pass was intercepted by Geno Rose in the first quarter. On their 41, the Wildcats covered 59 yards in six plays, the last 17 on Webster’s run through the Hawks’ defense.

El Dorado, the defending Empire League champion, starts league play against Cypress next Thursday at Western High. Brea Olinda starts Orange League play with a game against Savanna at Western High next Friday.