Newport Harbor Walks Over Woodbridge

Quarterback Chris Manderino says his team’s goal is simple: Keep getting better each week. But it’s hard to imagine Newport Harbor getting much better than it was on Friday night.

The Sailors, ranked No. 3 in Orange County, walked off with a 28-0 Sea View League victory over Woodbridge, the defending league and Southern Section Division VI champion, before a homecoming crowd of 4,000 at Newport Harbor High.

Coupled with Aliso Niguel’s 9-0 loss to Laguna Hills, the Sailors clinched their second league title of the decade.

“I think there have been only eight league champions at the school in 69 years,” Newport Harbor Coach Jeff Brinkley said. “We’ve had some great teams, we’ve been to the section finals three times in the 1990s, but we’ve won only one league title--in 1994.”

Make that two for Newport Harbor, which is 7-0-1 overall, 3-0 with a game to play against Aliso Niguel in two weeks.

Woodbridge (5-3, 0-2), which won its first four games, is behind the eight-ball.

“We have to win our last two games to make the playoffs,” Woodbridge Coach Rick Gibson said. “The pressure’s on us. We’ll see what kind of character we have.

“Our kids never gave up tonight, regardless of the scoreboard.”

And that made Newport Harbor’s victory even more impressive.

Against a Woodbridge defense that has two shutouts, limited another team to seven points and hadn’t allowed more than 21 this season, Newport Harbor’s Andre Stewart rushed 32 times for 167 yards and a touchdown--a one-yard fourth-quarter score with 1 minute 7 seconds remaining.

And Manderino completed four of only eight passes, but there was a 20-yard completion on third and eight in the first quarter that led to his one-yard quarterback sneak for a 7-0 lead, and there was his 17-yard completion to Justin Jacobs in the third quarter that made it 21-0. On that one, the defense bit on Manderino’s play action to Stewart, and Jacobs was all alone.

Manderino rushed for two touchdowns, adding an 11-yard scoring run in the second quarter for a 14-0 lead.

“We didn’t pass a lot, but Chris made the critical throws and he made a great decision on the naked bootleg,” Brinkley said.

Manderino credited the Sailors’ defense.

“We pretty much shut Shane [Harris] down, which was our goal--force them to pass,” Manderino said.

Harris rushed 13 times for 46 yards, and 20 of those came on two runs out of punt formation. The Sailors intercepted three passes, two by Dayne Pfaff and one by Billy Clayton. Woodbridge gained only 112 yards to the Sailors’ 289.