INLAND FIELDHOUSE

I covered the Lake Elsinore Temescal Canyon-Riverside Norte Vista varsity football game for The Press-Enterprise on Friday, Sept. 2, 2011, and came away thinking that it’s probably a good thing that Temescal Canyon ran the ball 67 of 75 offensive plays.

Why? Because the Titans had serious issues catching the football, and not just on offense, where they completed just 3 of 8 pass attempts for a whopping 14 yards. Temescal Canyon defenders dropped at three potential interceptions, all of which kept Norte Vista in the game far longer than the Braves probably should have been.

Despite all the drops, Temescal Canyon coach Mike Sands said he wasn’t nervous when Norte Vista scored on the first play of the second half to make it a three-point game.

“Nervous? Me? No,” said Sands, the Titans’ second-year coach. “We’re way too experienced to be worried about stuff like that.”

Pressure means little when you have 5-foot-9 senior Michael Shepherd (pictured) in your backfield.

“We know we can come back. We know our offense is good enough,” Sands said.

Shepherd ran for 327 yards and five touchdowns – including his fourth of the game less than three minutes later – for Temescal Canyon, which never trailed in defeating Norte Vista, 42-26, on Friday night.

Now if the Titans can work on an aerial attack, they might just dethrone Elsinore as Sunbelt League champions.

Temescal Canyon coach Mike Sands:
“I thought we were going to play a pretty good team, and I think we played a pretty good team. Their quarterback is really good. The big difference was our really good offensive line, and Michael Shepherd running the football. I think we played pretty good defense. We made three mistakes – one of which is mine – and we gave up three touchdowns. Those are the kinds of mistakes that happen in the first game. I think everyone that wasn’t a starter last year was really nervous and it was like each one of them decided to drop the football. I thought they played well. They were just nervous.”

Temescal Canyon senior RB Michael Shepherd:
“We just have a lot of experience in our front, which helped up out tremendously. The o-line opened it up for me. They’re all returners. They’re all big guys. They stepped it up for me. When they come out to play, this is what happens – 21 points at half. What can I say? I’m just fortunate. We have a lot of stuff to work on. We have to be more disciplined on the penalties – we can’t be jumping offside. But for our first game, I think we did pretty good. Our guys, our leaders, stepped up and we found out which guys are going to plays which positions. It’s all experimenting.”

Riverside Norte Vista coach Ken Batdorf:
“I saw some really good things that we did. We’re balanced, which is good. Offensively, we did some really good things. We had a few too many penalties and it killed a couple of drives but offensively, we saw some good stuff. Disappointed with special teams. Specifically PAT. Disappointed with defense. We didn’t tackle well. A couple of times we hit (Michael Shepherd) in the backfield for a yard loss and he still got five yards. We didn’t do a good enough job tackling him, and I have no idea how many yards he had but I’d guess it’s probably pretty close to a mile. And I bet he had about 50 carries. Give him credit. That kid played great. Give a lot of credit to their line, too. They won the battle up front. We have to get better up front. We have to catch the ball better – we had a lot of drops. We fix those things and we’ll be a really good football team. I think it was closer than it showed, and that’s the thing I felt pretty good about. I’m disappointed we lost but there’s some good things we can take from this. It’s a non-league game. The whole idea is to get ready for league, and most people said that we had no chance. If we play a little bit better – obviously make a few more catches and a few more tackles – we could win this game. This is what frustrates me because we’ve spent a lot of time on (special teams). It didn’t show. Obviously, we have to spend more time on it. If we have to change personnel then we change personnel. It think the kids in there can do it, they just have to have confidence in themselves, and they don’t right now.”