Marina wins!

Jeff Turley was asked how he felt moments after his Marina football team had defeated Ocean View Friday.

“The monkey is off the back,” he said.

It was.

Turley registered his first victory as head coach at Marina and the Vikings broke a 19-game losing skid in the process, doing so with a scintillating, third-quarter blitz that earned them a 31-6 victory at Ocean View.

“This is something I’ve wanted for these kids for some time,” he said. “I’m hoping this kicks off the change that we are looking for in this program. I truly believe we have the talent. We don’t have the numbers, but we have the talent. It’s just a matter of these kids believing in that talent.”

Turley took over the Marina program last year, and it was a tough first season for the former longtime Long Beach Poly defensive coordinator. His initial squad went 0-10, which included a 7-6 loss to Ocean View. The Vikings opened their 2015 season last week and were defeated, 40-21, by Aliso Niguel.

Friday’s win is the first for the Marina program since it defeated Ocean View, 33-14, in the second game of the 2013 season. It was the first time the neighboring schools and former Sunset League rivals had met on the gridiron in 21 years.

Friday’s triumph allowed Marina to take a 2-1 lead in the renewed series.

The Vikings made some key adjustments at halftime which helped them wipe out a 6-3 deficit at the break.

“I think it was nerves and hype at the beginning of the game that got to us,” Turley said. “We were down but we just got back to the basics in the second half, and that was blocking and tackling. We made a couple of personnel changes and we came out with a lot of energy in the second half.”

The Vikings looked like a new team at the outset of the second half. They scored on their first four possessions of the half, each coming in the third quarter, getting four touchdowns on only 14 plays. Three of those scoring drives took only two plays.

“We struck fast,” Turley said. “Our guys were really fired up in that third quarter.”

Ocean View, playing its season opener, had gone into the half with momentum and a precarious lead, but the Seahawks couldn’t keep pace with the Vikings in the final half.

“I saw a lot of good things from our young team, and we had a lot of guys playing their first time on varsity, but we simply ran out of gas,” Ocean View Coach Luis Nunez said. “That third quarter happened real fast. This team will be OK, though.”

Marina took the second half kickoff and started from its own 23-yard line. Two plays into the drive, junior tailback Cooper Malerstein, who missed Marina’s season opener due to injury, took a handoff from senior quarterback Dominic Gonzalez and sped straight up the middle of the field for a 71-yard scoring run. Rand Keidel, whose 40-yard field goal in the second quarter had given Marina a 3-0 lead, put the Vikings in front for good at 10-6.

Two minutes later, junior wide receiver Noah Holmes ended another quick, two-play series when he took a slant pass from Gonzalez at the Ocean View 46 and outraced the secondary to the end zone. The 58-yard pass play and Keidel’s kick made it 17-6.

Marina needed a little longer to strike again. An eight-play drive, which began at its own 40, was capped by sophomore tailback Blaine Riederich who sped around right end to score on a six-yard run.

A little more than two minutes later, Marina’s final two-play scoring drive of the quarter came when Gonzalez lofted a 22-yard scoring pass to junior wide receiver Noah Holmes in the end zone for a 31-6 advantage with 12 seconds left in the quarter.

While Marina had found a groove offensively, Ocean View was stagnant. The Seahawks went three-and-out in each of their four possessions of the third quarter, their fourth series ending 10 seconds into the fourth quarter. They managed only seven yards in those possessions, and got their initial first down of the second half with 7:38 left in the game.

Mistakes hurt both teams early in the game. On Marina’s first series, Gonzalez was intercepted by Ocean View senior free safety Dylan Durham who got the pick off a deflection at midfield and returned it to the Marina 34. On the very next play, Marina senior linebacker Max Melfi, who also didn’t play in Marina’s season opener, recovered a fumble to give the Vikings the ball right back.

On Ocean View’s next possession, junior running back Adel Holmes burst through the line of scrimmage and rambled 46 yards down to the Marina 27 late in the first quarter. That scoring threat ended when Riederich, at safety, intercepted Seahawks senior quarterback Blake Meyer at the 12.

Marina rode the passing of Gonzalez, who started his first game, on its only scoring drive of the opening half. He completed five passes during a drive that began at the 12, including two on third-down plays. The Vikings reached the Ocean View 21 where the drive stalled. Keidel came on to split the uprights to give the Vikings a 3-0 lead with 9:25 left in the second quarter.

Earlier in the drive, a 73-yard touchdown run by Riederich was called back due to a holding call against the Vikings.

Ocean View mounted its only scoring drive midway through the quarter. The Seahawks drove from their own 26 down to the Marina 36 where Holmes had a nice, 18-yard run down to the 18. Junior wide receiver/running back Chase Foreman followed with a 13-yard run around right end, and Holmes did the scoring honors when he broke away at the line of scrimmage for a five-yard TD run.

The point-after kick failed, but Ocean View had taken a 6-3 lead with 3:04 to go in the half.

Gonzalez, who hit one of his final seven passes of the first half and was nine of 17 for 90 yards at the break, hit his first five passes of the second half, threw for 225 yards and was intercepted twice. Malerstein, limited to 14 yards on three carries in the first half, finished with 117 yards.

“It was his first start, and he got a ‘W,’” Turley said of Gonzalez. “During the week, he went in early and watched game film to prepare, and that was really great to see. It showed tonight.

“We had some good performances out there and it was great to get Cooper [Malerstein] and Max [Melfi] back. Those guys are key starters for us and obviously, those two make a huge difference. Max is our leading tackler from last year. Cooper said to me, ‘Coach, give me the ball,’ at halftime, and he goes out and busts that big touchdown run.”

Both Marina and Ocean View are back in action Sept. 11. The Vikings play another rivalry game when they take on Westminster (2-0) in the annual Black and Blue Game at Westminster’s Boswell Field. The Seahawks are on the road at Cerritos Valley Christian (2-0).

Both games kick off at 7 p.m.

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In other games Friday:

Edison (1-1) earned its first victory of the 2015 season by shutting out visiting Buena Park (1-1), 38-0.

Huntington Beach (1-1) went to San Clemente (1-1) and was handed a 51-21 loss.

Fountain Valley fell to 0-2 after a 26-11 loss at Long Beach Wilson (1-1).

Brethren Christian improved to 2-0 with a 56-19 rout of host Boron (0-2).

Sept. 10 Schedule (7 p.m.)

Trabuco Hills vs. Fountain Valley (at Huntington Beach High)

Sept. 11 Schedule (7 p.m.)

Canyon/Anaheim vs. Edison (at Huntington Beach High)

Westminster vs. Marina (at Westminster High)

Ocean View at Valley Christian

Huntington Beach at JSerra

Workman vs. Brethren Christian (at Ocean View High)