Santa Margarita Gets Its Kicks in Victory

Last season, Santa Margarita blew away Corona del Mar with brute force. This season, the Eagles used their secret weapon--the onside kick. Corona del Mar stayed close to sixth-ranked Santa Margarita most of the night, but the Sea Kings could not overcome being surprised by two onside kicks and were beaten, 27-6, before about 6,000 at Saddleback College.

The first onside kick, recovered by Ryan Whelan, led to a 27-yard field goal by Matt Froehlich and gave the Eagles (6-1, 2-0) a 10-0 first-quarter lead. The second, pounced on by Lee Smith, led to a 12-yard touchdown run by Spencer McCroskey and put the game out of reach at 27-6 early in the fourth quarter.

“We worked on it all week and we saw an opportunity,” said Santa Margarita Coach Jim Hartigan, whose team defeated Corona del Mar, 63-0, last season. “The second one was dictated by our field position. So we said, ‘Why not take a shot?’ ”

Froehlich said Hartigan approached him early in the week with an idea for a new play, a “gap onside kick.”

“We’d never done one of those before,” said Froehlich, who also kicked a 31-yard field goal in the second quarter. “We normally do the ones where you kick across the field and the other team sees it coming. They really gave us a hole and we took advantage of it.”

The first kick took Corona del Mar by surprise, but the second one came after the Sea Kings’ 15-yard penalty on a conversion attempt and was booted from Corona del Mar’s 45-yard line.

“They executed [the onside kicks] real well and we didn’t,” Corona del Mar Coach Dick Freeman said. “For some reason we moved away from the ball [on the second onside kick].”

The other back-breaker for Corona del Mar (5-2, 1-1) came on the second play of the fourth quarter, three plays after it trimmed Santa Margarita’s lead to 13-6 on Nate Lemmerman’s six-yard run. Santa Margarita quarterback Greg Orlando took the steam out of Corona del Mar’s comeback when he turned an option keeper upfield and raced 69 yards for a score. Orlando got a devastating block at midfield from running back Tyler Thompson, then juked two defenders at the 20 and ran in.

Orlando rushed for 108 yards in eight carries and completed nine of 19 passes for 136 yards and a touchdown.