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Mesa claims Mini Battle for the Bell again

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The Mini Battle for the Bell rivalry football game featured little offense. Through the first three quarters at Jim Scott Stadium on Thursday, Costa Mesa High and host Estancia accounted for zero points and a whole lot of offensive miscues.

Eleven seconds into the fourth quarter, both freshman teams committed mistakes on offense. Estancia turned the ball over on downs on Costa Mesa’s 20-yard line. After taking over on offense, a referee flagged the Mustangs for a false start on first down.

Looking back, Ben Swanson is glad a teammate jumped early. On the next play, Swanson burned the Eagles for an 85-yard touchdown pass.

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The left-handed quarterback hit a wide-open Jack Perez in stride 11 yards downfield, and no one was going to catch him. On his way to the end zone, Perez even raised the ball in the air, knowing his score would be more than enough for the Mustangs to defeat Estancia, 14-0, in an Orange Coast League game.

Perez had a good reason to celebrate. Costa Mesa (4-2-1, 1-1-0 in league) claimed the cross-town rivalry for the second straight year.

There used to be a time when Estancia owned the series, winning five of six meetings from 2007-12. Times appear to be changing.

The two head coaches are Costa Mesa graduates, Paul Grady (1988) and Nathan Hunter (2003). Grady, the varsity baseball coach at Costa Mesa, is in charge of the Mustangs’ freshman football team, and Hunter is in his third year at the helm of the Eagles.

Hunter has coached against Grady before. He’s an assistant baseball coach at Estancia. Grady hasn’t been able to win the Battle for the Bell in baseball during his first two seasons in charge of the Mustangs.

Grady pulled it off in his first try as the school’s freshman football coach.

One big play is all the Mustangs needed, and they finally produced it early in the fourth quarter against Estancia (1-6, 0-2). They failed to do anything three times in the red zone in the previous two quarters, seeing Estancia’s Nathan Almendarez intercept a pass, and Josh Griffith and Marcell Thomas each stuff fourth-down runs near the Eagles’ 10-yard line.

“I was going to hope for my defense to score for a while there,” Grady said with a smile. “I think we were ready for them defensively for what they were going to do. There [were] no really surprises for us.

“Our defense kept us in the game long enough, so that our offense could work.”

Costa Mesa had to go a long way to score when its offense went back to work early in the final quarter. The Eagles gave the ball back to the Mustangs when they failed to move the chains on a fourth-and-four pass on Costa Mesa’s 20-yard line.

Then the Mustangs began to go in the opposite direction. A five-yard penalty moved the offense back five yards.

Faced with a first-and-15 from their 15-yard line, the Mustangs went with a play-action pass. With the defense stacking the box to stop the Mustangs’ backfield of Zach Schantz and David Garcia, and no free safety over the top, Swanson faked the dive to the fullback. Swanson quickly released the ball to Perez over the middle, and he sprinted for an 85-yard touchdown, helping the Mustangs take a 7-0 lead with 9:37 left.

“We knew it would work,” said Swanson, adding that for the second consecutive game the team played without its standout tailback and linebacker, Timmy French, who suffered a concussion in practice. “Now we know in the future that we have a good chance of beating them again because we didn’t have Timmy.”

Estancia lost one of its top players, Deshandre Kerkhoff, early on against Costa Mesa to a serious injury. Hunter said Kerkhoff, a running back and linebacker, dislocated his shoulder, ending his season.

Kerkhoff didn’t stick around to see the rest of the last three quarters. Those three quarters resembled the first, not much in the way of offense. The Eagles’ offense sputtered, and Garcia and Angel Valle harassed the Eagles’ two quarterbacks, Vincent Duarte, and Hunter Mensinger.

One pressure on the quarterback led to a fumble with two minutes to go, and Schantz recovered the ball near Estancia’s 20-yard line. Two plays later, Schantz rushed for an eight-yard touchdown.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Grady said of his first Mini Battle for the Bell as the head coach. “We made some mistakes [on offense], but they didn’t end up hurting us too badly. I knew early on that I could rely on my defense.”

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