Eagles forced to share

NEWPORT BEACH — On a Friday night when it seemed ideal to crown an outright champion, Estancia High missed its chance on homecoming.

It had been 18 years since the last time the Eagles won a solo league football championship. Now they’re stuck sharing the title.

Not with just any team, but their cross-town rival, Costa Mesa.

The Eagles made an array of mistakes, allowing defending Orange Coast League champ Laguna Beach to win, 17-13, and dash any hope that the crown would belong solely to Estancia.

The Breakers weren’t even in contention to claim the league title like Estancia and Costa Mesa, who both finished 2-1 in league play. No CIF Southern Section Southern Division ramifications for Laguna Beach, either, just pride on the line.

As the players shuffled to the locker room at Newport Harbor High, one stayed back. Estancia senior Connor McKendry, surprised as everyone else, said calling the loss disappointing would be an “understatement.”

“It’s probably one of the worst things that we’re sharing it with Mesa,” said McKendry, frowning because Mesa won its first league championship since 2002, when it ran away with the Golden West League. “[Coach Mike Bargas] is really upset with us and I’m really upset with myself.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen, not the way the 6-foot-4, 255-pound McKendry, on both sides of the ball, cleared the way for the ground game and dominated defensively in Estancia’s previous two league games.

This was supposed to be the game running back Carlos Mendez delivered his third straight 200-yard performance and broke the school’s single-season rushing record of 1,477 yards held by Marshall Hendricks.

This was the game the Eagles were going to make a name for themselves in the school record book. The first outright league champs since 1989, trying to draw comparisons to that team going 10-0 during the regular season.

Now the Eagles (5-5) will try to avoid losing in the opening round like that 1989 team did, the lone blemish that year. If they can regroup under Bargas, in his first year, almost all would be forgotten with snapping a seven-game losing streak in first-round games.

The last Estancia team to win a first-round game was in 1980, even Bargas was still in school. Estancia will receive the league’s No. 1 entry into the playoffs because it beat Costa Mesa (3-7) last week, 41-13. When the playoff pairings are announced Sunday, Bargas knows his team will have its hands full whomever it plays.

“A lot of variables that prevented us from being the sole champions,” he said. “Some of us thought [the Breakers] were just going to fold [their] tent on us. We missed a field goal [in the second quarter]. We missed the extra point [in the third]. We get penalized [for offsides on fourth-and-one and 1:34 left in the game].

“We got flagged [at crucial times]. Our coaches, we did it ourselves, too. It was a whole team effort.”

The miscues took away another strong performance turned in by Mendez. He scored the team’s two touchdowns and finished with 133 yards on 28 carries, giving him 1,440 yards for the season and making him 38 yards short of breaking Hendricks’ record set in 1999.

But the offense, at times, strayed from giving the junior the ball, as it threw the ball with Laguna Beach quarterback Charley Bowman doing whatever it took to give the Breakers a 17-7 halftime lead.

Bowman, the reigning league MVP, performed at his best in critical moments. Whether it was the 31-yard touchdown he fired in the second quarter, or the 53-yard run setting up his two-yard sneak for a touchdown late in the quarter, Bowman stepped up for a Breakers team (2-8, 1-2 in league) that came into the game on a seven-game skid and winless in league.

His biggest play was the hard count with 1:34 remaining. Faced with a fourth-and-one on Estancia’s 48, he got a lineman to jump offside, giving Laguna Beach a first down and the opportunity to run out the clock.

“I knew beating these guys was going to be tough,” said Bowman, who in his final game as a senior finished with 67 yards rushing and 74 yards passing. “We kind of had something in our eyes, just looking at the guys in the huddle. We knew were going to get this. We needed this.”

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at [email protected].

FIRST QUARTER

Est – Mendez 4 run (Diego kick), 6:20.

SECOND QUARTER

LB – Paddon 31 pass from Bowman (Snedegar kick), 11:52.

LB – Bowman 2 run (Snedegar kick), 3:12.

LB – Snedegar 37 FG , 0:00.

THIRD QUARTER

Est – Mendez 4 run (kick failed), 6:04.

INDIVIDUAL RUSHING

LB – Smith, 26-98; Bowman, 8-67, 1 TD; John, 1-5; Kaplan, 1-minus 10.

Est – Mendez, 28-133, 2 TDs; Moreno, 7-58; Redding, 5-37.

INDIVIDUAL PASSING

LB – Bowman, 5-10-1, 74, 1 TD.

Est – Gutierrez, 9-15-1, 64.

INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING

LB – Paddon, 1-31, 1 TD; Snedegar, 1-24; John, 1-11; Jaffe, 1-7; Colladay, 1-1.

Est – Redding, 2-14; Moreno, 2-12; Diego, 1-11; Arciga, 1-11; Mellin, 1-9; Tomasek, 2-7.