Marina drops Lambda League finale, qualifies for CIF playoffs on coin flip

TUSTIN — Word arrived after the break, after the first-half miscues and misfortune, after the favored foe had risen from its funk and pulled two touchdowns ahead.

Marina, which headed into its regular season-ending showdown with Beckman at Tustin High, knowing that a victory might be required to snare one of the Lambda League’s three guaranteed berths in the CIF Southern Section football playoffs, could rest easy. They were in.

Head coach Charlie TeGantvoort glanced at his phone deep into the second half of Friday night’s 21-14 loss to the Lambda League champion and saw athletic director Nick Racklin’s text: The Vikings had won a three-way coin flip to break a third-place tie with Kennedy and Sunny Hills. Win or lose, they were postseason-bound.

“He was, like, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” said TeGantvoort, who has taken Marina to the playoffs three successive seasons after just one appearance in the previous 22 years. “He just texted me, like, ‘Don’t stress. Yeah, we’re going.’”

TeGantvoort didn’t share the news with his players until it was over, sweetening a frustrating evening produced by four turnovers, a blocked punt and two short fields — 14 and 26 yards — that Beckman quickly traversed en route to leads in the first quarter and soon after halftime.

“Even though it is kind of sad that we lost, there’s mixed emotions, because we’re in the playoffs now,” senior linebacker Gunnar Mickelson said. “It’s not over yet. We’ve just got to go win every week now. But there’s a lot to fix. We’ve got to catch the ball. We’ve got to just hold onto the rock better. There’s a lot of things that we should do better, but there’s things to look forward to in the playoffs.”

Marina (6-4, 2-3 in the Lambda League) travels to top-seeded Palm Desert (7-3), which shared the Desert Empire League championship with Palm Springs, to begin the Division 8 playoffs on Friday.

There’s still residue from last year’s first-round defeat in Division 7 after Marina went 9-1 in the regular season and shared the inaugural Lambda League title with Beckman and Kennedy.

“We’re trying to go all the way [this time],” Mickelson said. “I don’t care, I’m taking my team to the ship, and we’re going. ... We’re just ready to get that film going on Sunday and see who we got and prepare for the next week.”

Francis Saporito ran for 79 yards, completed 11 of 24 passes for 113 yards and scored both touchdowns on short runs, the first in response to Beckman’s initial score, the second bringing Marina within a touchdown with five minutes to go.

The Vikings moved the ball steadily in the first half but got too little from it. Their first drive ended in an end-zone interception — the first of two long Saporito-to-Carson Hunnicutt passes that sophomore Xavier Musselman-Cano picked off — and a red-zone giveaway on the punt that followed led to the home team’s first touchdown.

Marina made contact with the ball on Aiden Wimberly’s punt, TeGantvoort acknowledged after watching video of the play, but he had a problem with Beckman’s recovery at the 14.

“Their guy kicked it into us,” he said. “Literally, it was like soccer. There’s no replay in high school, and [referees] do their best, and we’ve just got to learn and maybe yell, ‘Poison,’ a little louder and get away from the ball.”

Quarterback Noah Nam pushed in from the 1-yard line three plays later for a 7-0 advantage. The Vikings responded with an 80-yard drive, capped by a 3-yard Saporito run four minutes into the second quarter. Their next drive ended in the other Musselman-Cano interception, and Beckman (7-3, 5-0) took charge after halftime.

Aidan Tran’s 19-yard, fourth-down touchdown run four plays after Tomo Bermejo blocked a Noah Valdez punt restored the Patriots’ lead. Nam connected with Sawyer Nickelson to make it 21-7 three minutes later.

Marina made a game of it down the stretch, using three fourth-down conversions — the last on a roughing-the-passer penalty — on a 16-play, nearly seven-minute drive that closed with a 1-yard Saporito run, then got the ball back with 3:19 remaining as Mickelson recovered a fumbled snap at the Vikings’ 13-yard line. It was over five plays later, another interception.

“[We] fought hard,” TeGantvoort said. “We keep fighting, we keep being resilient, and that game was right there for us to take against a very good team. ... No one ever accuses us of being the most talented, but we are definitely tough and we definitely give a lot of effort. Those qualities are going to help [us] win football games.”

Lambda League

Beckman 21, Marina 14

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Marina 0 - 7 - 0 - 7 — 14

Beckman 7 - 0 - 14 - 0 — 21

FIRST QUARTER

B — Nam 1 run (Wimberly kick), 1:57.

SECOND QUARTER

M — Saporito 3 run (C. Martinez kick), 7:53.

THIRD QUARTER

B — Tran 19 run (Wimberly kick), 7:25.

B — Nickelson 13 pass from Nam (Wimberly kick), 4:30.

FOURTH QUARTER

M — Saporito 1 run (C. Martinez kick), 5:00.

INDIVIDUAL RUSHING

M — Saporito, 13-79, 2 TDs; Ramos, 16-35; Delgado, 7-22; O’Rourke, 1-0.

B — Tran, 5-35, 1 TD; Czaykowski, 9-31; Knight, 1-0; Nam, 10-(-9).

INDIVIDUAL PASSING

M — Saporito, 11-24-3, 113.

B — Nam, 12-22-0, 132, 1 TD; Wimberly, 0-1-0, 0.

INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING

M — Hunnicutt, 6-64; Kirk, 2-35; Wells, 2-17; Delgado, 1-10.

B — Czaykowski, 4-111; Nickelson, 4-57, 1 TD; Rosa, 4-31.