Newport Harbor Steamrolls Foothill on Homecoming to Start Epsilon League 1-0

Newport Beach – The Newport Harbor football team opened up Epsilon League play with a 48-7 win over Foothill on Friday at Davidson Field in their homecoming game.

From the opening kickoff, the Sailors were ready to go, as they struck first on a two-yard rushing touchdown from Jackson Stremick after having a drive that ate up over half the quarter. Despite getting untimely penalties, the Sailors’ defense held the Knights at bay, holding them to only 20 yards of offense and only two completions in the first half.

“Offensively we were just playing fast and playing hard and keeping the ball moving through the ground and the air and defensively, we knew we just had to stop the run and that’s what we did,” Stremick said.

Newport Harbor then started pouring it on in the second quarter, as the first play of the quarter saw Jordan Spigarelli find Shane McKibbon for a 67-yard touchdown catch and run after Spigarelli threw the ball up for grabs with McKibbon in the area with one man to beat.

The Sailors’ second touchdown of the second quarter was courtesy of Darian Leyva who took the pitch from Spigarelli and found Ryan Palmer all alone on the 10 and eventually the endzone. They then concluded the scoring in the first half, as Spigarelli found Palmer for both players’ second touchdown, as Newport Harbor went into halftime up 27-0.

“I think we just carried the energy [from the Colony game]. No mental mistakes was our biggest thing and we just rallied to the ball,” McKibbon said.

Things started off grim for Foothill to start the second half, as Newport Harbor kicked off to start the half, but the Knights never recovered the ball on the kickoff, allowing the Sailors to scoop it up at the Foothill 20. Eventually, Pepe Tena, a rising junior running back, ran it in for the score from eight yards out, extending the Sailors’ lead to 34-0.

Matthew Yamakawa ran it in for a nine-yard rushing touchdown, marking his first time he found the endzone and it looked like Newport Harbor was about to pitch a second straight shutout. But Foothill broke the shutout after Aidan Faraj ran it in on a 26-yard touchdown run.

But the game was out of reach, as before the game ended, junior running back Ethan Ekedal ran it in for a 57-yard touchdown on the last play for the Sailors to cap off a successful homecoming game.

Newport Harbor is back in action next Friday when it plays at Tesoro at 7 p.m. The Titans lost to Aliso Niguel 24-10 in their Epsilon League opener, but their previous three meeting with the Sailors have been one score games with the Sailors winning two out of three.