Huntington Beach lights up scoreboard in win over Laguna Hills
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Brady Edmunds and Troy Foster have been setting standards for Huntington Beach’s football program since arriving on campus two years ago. Friday night, they took it to another level.
Edmunds, a towering, Ohio State-bound quarterback, completed 21 of 23 passes for 385 yards and seven touchdowns, connecting five times for scores with Foster, a big, slippery receiver headed to Colorado State, as the Oilers opened their Epsilon League campaign with a 65-10 homecoming destruction of visiting Laguna Hills.
Steel Kurtz reeled in two more touchdown passes and Nathan Villanueva and Nathan Santillan ran for scores as Huntington Beach (5-1) romped to a 30-0 lead in the first quarter and hit the end zone on every possession, five times in four or fewer plays.
Foster, a senior, bettered his school’s single-game record for receiving touchdowns and yardage (249 on nine catches); Edmunds, a junior, for passing touchdowns; and the Oilers for points against a foe whose coach, before the game, readily acknowledged was “nowhere near” Huntington Beach’s level.
“It’s only beginning,” said Foster, a senior who transferred from Los Alamitos after his freshman year to join Edmunds, from whom he’d been catching balls since they were in elementary school. “You can just tell from the beginning of the year how much we’ve progressed and grown. This team has a real special bond, something I haven’t seen in my whole career, and we’ve got a special group of coaches and players, and we just all love fighting for each other. ...
“We’re going to keep putting up points like that, hopefully. That’s the goal, we’re only trending up, and it’s going to be an interesting year. Going to be exciting, for sure.”
Next up for the Oilers: defending Epsilon League champion La Habra (5-1), an enduring powerhouse.
“That’s definitely one we’ve circled,” Edmunds said. “We lost on a last-second field goal last year, definitely a winnable game. I think we can do pretty well against them.”
The game started with a safety (on a snap that bounced past Hawks punter Nathaniel Mammen and out of the end zone on the game’s fifth play), featured three touchdowns of 66 yards or longer (Foster with tackle-breaking, defender-juking receptions of 70 and 66 yards, plus Santillan’s mazy, 66-yard sprint at the finish), and saw the Oilers amass 556 yards of offense, but the biggest “oh-wow” moment wasn’t theirs.
Mammen booted a no-question, down-the-middle 51-yard field goal that cleared the uprights by a good half-dozen yards to punctuate Laguna Hills’ productive second quarter.
“I was the first one to congratulate the kid,” said first-year Huntington Beach head coach Matthew Hatchette, a former NFL receiver. “That was a great kick. I don’t think he even hesitated. He just walked up and booted that thing.”
Said Edmunds: “That was impressive.”
Another Foster touchdown, a 74-yard return on the post-safety free kick, was erased by a midfield holding penalty, but the Oilers were in the end zone four plays later on Villanueva’s 11-yard run. Kurtz and Gavin Seguin collaborated on a fumble recovery at the Laguna Hills 16 barely a minute later, and Foster took an inside pass to the end zone. Edmunds tossed two more touchdown passes, to Foster and Kurtz, in the final minute of the quarter.
Laguna Hills totaled 110 yards, all but 19 on two lengthy, time-consuming drives leading to a touchdown and Mammen’s field goal. Every other drive ended in three plays.
Foster followed both Hawks scores with touchdowns, the 70-yarder just before halftime, then got the 66-yarder on the second half’s opening drive. The fourth quarter was played with a running clock.
Edmunds came up short of his single-game passing yardage record —414 in last year’s Epsilon victory over Foothill — but was more precise, missing on just one pass. The other incompletion was a Foster drop.
“I’m going to get on him for that,” Hatchette said, smiling broadly. “They’re starting to really figure it out. I think the game is slowing down for them. They’ve been playing with each other for a very long time, and that’s starting to show up, as well.”
Edmunds pushed his season totals to 1,603 yards and 21 touchdowns and career numbers to 7,516 yards and 81 touchdowns. Foster has 877 receiving yards and 11 scores this year.
Brady is why Foster is an Oiler.
“Me and Brady have been playing since fourth or fifth grade,” he said. “I originally went to Los Alamitos my freshman year, and he was kind of figuring out what high school he was going to go to. He told me he was coming to Huntington Beach. I’m like, ‘Let’s do it, man.’ I mean, we already had great chemistry.
“Knowing a guy like that my whole life? I mean, I’ve had so-so quarterbacks growing up, and to come in here and play with a dude that caliber — top-five quarterback in the nation going to Ohio State — makes my life so much easier. I just got to get to the spot, and I know the ball’s going to be there.”
Nonleague
Huntington Beach 65, Laguna Hills 10
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Laguna Hills 0 - 10 - 0 - 0 — 10
Huntington Beach 30 - 14 - 14 - 7 — 65
FIRST QUARTER
HB — Safety (ball snapped out of end zone), 10:42.
HB — Villanueva 11 run (Dunham kick), 8:32.
HB — Foster 16 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 7:13.
HB — Foster 8 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 0:48.
HB — Kurtz 21 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 0:00.
SECOND QUARTER
LH — Medina 6 pass from Vanderbeek (Mammen kick), 8:17.
HB — Foster 32 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 5:52.
LH — Mammen 51 FG, 1:43.
HB — Foster 70 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 1:10.
THIRD QUARTER
HB — Foster 66 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 8:06.
HB — Kurtz 7 pass from Brady Edmunds (Dunham kick), 1:16.
FOURTH QUARTER
HB — Santillan 66 run (Dunham kick), 5:34.
INDIVIDUAL RUSHING
LH — Thomas, 5-41; Trudell, 7-22; Entrala, 7-14; Vanderbeek, 9-12; Sykes, 2-6; Brown, 3-4; Team, 1-(-18).
HB — Santillan, 5-92, 1 TD; Villanueva, 7-66, 1 TD; Sammartano, 3-10; Edmunds, 2-5; Gonzales, 1-1; Team, 1-(-3).
INDIVIDUAL PASSING
LH — Vanderbeek, 4-8-0, 29, 1 TD; Skala, 0-2-0, 0.
HB — Brady Edmunds, 21-23-0, 385, 7 TDs.
INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING
LH — Marquis, 2-12; Entrala, 1-11; Medina, 1-6, 1 TD.
HB — Foster, 9-249, 5 TDs; Kurtz, 5-53, 2 TDs; Bruce, 2-21; Smith, 2-13; Sammartano, 1-23; Villanueva, 1-17; Butler, 1-4.
