Not a Great Corona Start For Gueringer
One of the more interesting story lines this Inland Area prep football offseason has been Ron Gueringer’s move from San Bernardino San Gorgonio to Corona High.
Gueringer, who spent time as an assistant coach for Matt Logan at Corona Centennial before taking the head coaching job at San Gorgonio, never made it a secret that he wanted to be a head coach in the Big VIII League. He often said his goal was to create a culture at San G. that mimicked Centennial, and he delivered with a CIF-SS title last season.
That championship finally earned Gueringer a shot a Corona, a perennial Big VIII League afterthought that has made the playoffs just once in the last five seasons. His job leading the Panthers began in earnest on Friday, Aug. 25, and a 47-35 loss to Moreno Valley Valley View.
Unfortunately for Gueringer and the Panthers, the result compounds some early-season issues plaguing the team, which now will be without a number of impact transfers Gueringer had hoped to add by Week 6.
“We’ve taken some adversity in the last week and half,” Gueringer said. “It can’t affect us mentally. It’s over with. It’s done and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can linger with it and it can affect us more or we can deal with it and go forward and do the things we do.”
Despite scoring first on Friday night, Corona fell behind 28-7 at halftime and trailed 35-7 in the third quarter before showing some signs of life as Moses DeAnda and Keyon Gibson connected on a pair of touchdowns.
“We could have got smashed, and we responded, so that’s a great sign from our kids and it’s something to build on,” Gueringer said.
Indeed, Corona made a game of it and actually got to within six points before Valley View salted the game away with a long drive to kill off the fourth quarter.
“We could’ve quit, we were down 35 or something, but the kids competed and I can’t say how proud I am of the way the competed,” Gueringer said.
Two costly turnovers, a slew of missed opportunities on third down and an inability to stop Valley View’s rushing attack ultimately doomed Gueringer’s Corona debut much as it did his finale as head coach of San Gorgonio.
“Valley View runs it downhill. They pound people and we just weren’t able to be big enough to take on those guys,” Gueringer said. “Valley View isn’t a slouch. They pounded our asses that night (vs. San Gorgonio) and they pounded our asses again. They might be in a different division but they’ve got a lot of guys that went to the state finals.
“And so we played a talented team. We need to take away from that that we can probably beat some teams if we can play the kind of football that we can play, but we need to be on point. We can’t make many mistakes and we have to go from there,” Gueringer said.
BOX SCORE
Valley View 7 21 13 6—47
Corona 7 0 21 7—35
First quarter
C – Smevog 30 pass from DeAnda (Chanty kick), 6:08
V – Lovato 5 run (Chavez kick), 2:52
Second quarter
V – Keeling 1 run (Chavez kick), 11:01
V – Clark 7 pass from Barlage (Chavez kick), 8:25
V – Lovato 5 run (Chavez kick), 3:51
Third quarter
V – Keeling 6 run (no kick), 10:26
C – Gibson 66 pass from DeAnda (Chanty kick), 9:39
C – Gibson 21 pass from DeAnda (Chanty kick), 7:11
V – Keeling 23 run (Chavez kick), 6:11
C – Smevog 18 pass from DeAnda (Chanty kick), 4:41
Fourth quarter
C – Johnson 8 run (Chanty kick), 11:49
V – Keeling 1 run (no kick), 1:08
TEAM STATISTICS
First Downs
V – 20 / C – 9
Rushing
V – 54-341 / C – 22-66
Passing
V – 8-14-1-118 / C – 13-25-2-227
INTs
V – 1-0 / C – 2-29
Fumbles
V – 0 / C – 1
KO Returns
V – 3-42 / C – 5-72
Punt Returns
V – 2-0 / C – 2-25
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing: Valley View – Keeling 39-270, Lovato 13-78, Barlage 3-(minus-7); Corona – Johnson 9-40, Sanford 5-14, Wallander 5-14, DeAnda 3-(minus-2).
Passing: Valley View – Barlage 8-14-1-118; Corona – DeAnda 13-25-2-227.
Receiving: Valley View – Heiermann 3-51, Kerr 3-24, Woods 1-36, Clark 1-7; Corona – Gibson 5-104, Smevog 3-54, Wallander 3-38, Johnson 2-31.
INLAND FIELDHOUSE 