INLAND FIELDHOUSE

I covered the Riverside Poly-Riverside North varsity football game for The Press-Enterprise on Friday, Oct. 14, 2011 and came away thinking Riverside Poly coach Jeff Huerta rarely misses an opportunity for a laugh.

When sought for comment following the Bears’ 48-7 loss to Riverside North on Friday, Huerta found humor in at leas one of his team’s mistakes, saying Poly had difficulty “snapping the ball on punt. Ha! Ha!”

Twice in the first quarter the Bears turned the ball over while attempting to punt. First a botched snap for minus-21 yards then block that was recoverd inside their own 20-yard line.

“We just put ourselves in a hole early and we couldn’t dig out of it,” Huerta said.

Poly (2-4 overall, 0-3 Big VIII) has now lost three consecutive but it’s not all bad news as Homecoming Week begins for the Bears, who play host to winless Riverside King in Week 7.

“We have homecoming next. We have King next week. Those are two big things for us,” Huerta said. “We’ll come back. We’re fine.”

The Huskies (5-1 overall, 2-1 Big VIII) were as efficient as can be, gaining just 209 yards in the blowout. North played so well, in fact, that third-string sophomore Joseph Garcia saw some snaps.

North coach Mark Parades:
“We felt that the Poly-North game, it was going to be a tight game. It was going to be a tough game. It’s unfortunate that Poly had some miscues at the beginning. I feel bad for the Poly guys. The coaches over there are good guys and for that to happen… what are you going to do? Oh, of course. Oh, of course. It took a lot of pressure off. We felt it allows you to do more, take more chances, things of that nature. We went for it on fourth down over there. We went for it fourth down over here, and we were able to get it in. Keep in mind, we did not run the ball very well tonight. Poly did a great job so had we not got those breaks, it would’ve been a long night. It’ll give us a little bit of confidence after the previous week. We know we have a tough Roosevelt team coming up, and we know were going to have to do over a lot of the mistakes we did tonight, and shore’em up and make sure our running game gets going a little bit. I think (Denzel) Foster’s playing his rear-end off. He’s going some good things. We’re not helping him up front.”

North senior Marcus Baugh:
“It sours their mentality, and definitely boosts ours. We came out with a lot of momentum and we just kept it up through the game. We definitely wanted to win this. This is our homecoming, against our cross-town rival Poly. They hadn’t beat us in the last 18 years. They had just one win. We wanted to keep that us. I’m just trying to do the best I can to help the team, and going into next year we’re obviously switching leagues so I just want to keep ours wins up.”