Football: Miscues hurt Sailors

PALOS VERDES — For the first time in his 29 years as Newport Harbor High football coach, Jeff Brinkley coached in a regular-season afternoon game on Friday at Palos Verdes High.

The 3 p.m. start time was because Palos Verdes doesn’t have lights at its stadium. Brinkley said the stakes have been higher the only other two times he’s guided the Sailors in afternoon games. They were both CIF championship games at Angel Stadium, last year against Huntington Beach and in 2004 against Orange Lutheran.

To get back to a possible afternoon game a couple months from now, Brinkley knows that the Sailors will have to play better than they played Friday.

Two early turnovers hurt the Sailors in the nonleague game. They played catch-up all game before running out of time and losing, 49-35.

The game was the first of two straight against a team with the Sea Kings mascot. The one next week will be much more hyped, as Newport Harbor (1-1) will face Corona del Mar in the Battle of the Bay game at Davidson Field.

“Absolutely,” Brinkley said when asked if his team would have to play better to beat CdM, which came out on top in the rivalry game last year for the first time since 2006 and won its 29th straight game Friday. “It just gets tougher from here on out for us. [Palos Verdes is] a good football team, but they’re not like the teams that we have in front of us. With all due respect to them, because they’re a good team and they play in a good league, but we’ve got a bunch of tough ones coming up.”

What was tough against Palos Verdes (1-2) was the first quarter. On the Sailors’ first drive of the game, a pass went through the hands of the intended receiver and bounced up in the air. Adison Umrarong of Palos Verdes scooped the ball and took it back 27 yards for a touchdown.

The second drive wasn’t much better, ending when the Sailors running back fumbled the ball at the Newport Harbor 46-yard line. Six plays later, the hosts were in the end zone again, this time on a five-yard keeper by quarterback Steven Delcarson, and Palos Verdes had a 14-0 advantage late in the first quarter.

“We were in catch-up mode the rest of the day,” Brinkley said. “We can’t turn the ball over; we’re not good enough to do that and still survive.”

The Sailors, ranked No. 10 in the CIF Southern Section West Valley Division, did tie the score in the second quarter, after a one-yard keeper by senior quarterback Cole Norris and a four-yard touchdown pass from Norris to Keaton Cablay. The duo hooked up for two touchdowns on the day, and Norris also found Riley Gaddis, who made a spectacular catch on a 65-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Norris finished with 235 yards passing and three touchdowns. Six different Sailors caught passes, Cablay the most with nine catches for 85 yards.

But the Sailors never could take the lead. Delcarson, who missed Palos Verdes’ last game with a back injury, only attempted 10 passes on Friday. Most of the time he handed the ball off to senior running back Stanton Gilbertson, who finished with 172 yards rushing and four touchdowns. Umrarong added a 43-yard touchdown run for the winners, ranked No. 9 in the Western Division.

“Both running backs did a great job, and so did the guys up front, our tight ends and our fullbacks,” Palos Verdes Coach Guy Gardner said. “Yeah, it was nice. We needed to improve at the fundamentals of the game, and I thought we took a step toward doing that.

“You’ve got to hand it to Newport Harbor. They’re not going to go away … the whole thing was a game until the last seven minutes, so they didn’t go away. They’re a good program, and they’re going to have a solid year, an excellent year. It’s probably tough for teams from Orange County to have to come up here for a 3 o’clock day game. It’s probably not the best thing for them. I’m sure that they wouldn’t make any excuses, but it’s not always the No. 1 choice.”

Brinkley indeed didn’t make any excuses, saying, “football is football.” Palos Verdes, the three-time defending Bay League champion, made more big football plays. The last one came on Gilbertson’s seven-yard touchdown run in the last two minutes that put his team up three scores.

Newport senior tailback Chance Siemonsma scored on a 71-yard touchdown run in the final minute, but the Sailors just ran out of time.

“We never could catch up,” Brinkley said. “We never could get that one big play to maybe get that momentum back.”

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Palos Verdes 49, Newport Harbor 35

SCORE BY QUARTERS

NH 0 – 14 – 7 – 14 — 35

PV 14 – 14 – 14 – 7 — 49

FIRST QUARTER

PV – Umrarong 27 INT return (Coale kick), 7:20.

PV – Delcarson 5 run (Coale kick), 2:55.

SECOND QUARTER

NH – Norris 1 run (Schultz kick), 11:17.

NH – Cablay 4 pass from Norris (Schultz kick), 7:35.

PV – Gilbertson 22 run (Coale kick), 5:36.

PV – Umrarong 43 run (Coale kick), 4:15.

THIRD QUARTER

NH – Cablay 37 pass from Norris (Schultz kick), 7:20.

PV – Gilbertson 6 run (Coale kick), 4:05.

PV – Gilbertson 23 run (Coale kick), 0:41.

FOURTH QUARTER

NH – Gaddis 65 pass from Norris (Schultz kick), 11:08.

PV – Gilbertson 7 run (Coale kick), 1:16.

NH – Siemonsma 71 run (Schultz kick), 0:23.

INDIVIDUAL RUSHING

NH – Siemonsma, 9-107, 1 TD.

PV – Gilbertson, 21-172, 4 TDs.

INDIVIDUAL PASSING

NH – Norris, 20-32-1, 235, 3 TDs.

PV – Delcarson, 5-10-0, 95.

INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING

NH – Cablay, 9-85, 2 TDs; Gaddis, 2-74, 1 TD.

PV – Cahill, 1-44.