FOOTBALL

Victories have been hard to come by in recent years at Orange Coast so it was no surprise the Pirates celebrated a great deal after beating host Saddleback Saturday.

OCC had stopped a 17-game losing streak in the final game last year but Saturday’s victory ended an 11-game road losing streak that dated back to November of 1995.

“It’s a good win,” said Coach Bill Workman, whose team trailed by 16 at the half but rallied for a 20-16 victory. “This helps us a lot.”

Sophomore wide receiver Ivan Mercer, who caught two fourth-quarter touchdown passes from freshman quarterback Jared Flint, had a unique explanation for the second-half comeback.

Wide receiver David Castleton came up to Mercer during halftime and told him it looked like Mercer wasn’t having any fun. Mercer took the observation to heart and passed it on to his teammates.

“I was asking them,” Mercer said, “ ‘What do you play football for? Because it’s fun, right? You have got to make football fun. You tee off on someone and help him up and laugh at him. Then he tees off on you and laughs at you. It has to be fun.’ ”

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Golden West, in search of stiff competition, heads to Arizona State this weekend to take play in the Valley of the Sun women’s volleyball tournament.

The Rustlers, who have won five consecutive state titles, will play College of Southern Idaho, which is the top-ranked team in the nation, in the round-robin format. California college are not part of national rankings.

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The Mission Conference holds the four top spots in the weekly Southland football poll but no Orange County teams are in the poll.

Long Beach (2-0) is first, Mt. San Antonio (2-0) second and El Camino (2-0) is third and Palomar (2-0) moves from fifth to fourth.

Hancock (2-0) is fifth, Chaffey (2-0) sixth, Los Angeles Valley (2-0) seventh, Ventura (2-0) eighth, Bakersfield (1-1) ninth and Citrus (2-0) 10th.

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Cypress’ Jane Specht leads Orange Empire Conference women’s soccer players in goals with 11 and Riverside’s Jessica Lepore is second with 10. Cypress (9-0-1) has at least twice as many victories as any other team.

Conference play starts Friday.