Prep Impressions: Oct. 29, 2021
RIALTO – The Fontana Summit-Rialto Eisenhower varsity football game on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, was a low-scoring, tempo-controlled grind befitting a league championship game.
For Fontana Summit, a massive 17-play, 10-minute drive to begin the second half that is probably the longest possession we’ve seen this season. Five first downs on the drive in all – four on third down – and it was just De’Marri Owens and Sitani Mikaele pounding the rock and moving the chains. It was a beautiful thing to see, and an absolute back-breaker for their opponent. Sure, the game still had 14-ish minutes to play but the SkyHawks had all the confidence they needed to finish it off.
Fontana Summit head coach Nick Matheny: “(Sitane) Mikaele got us going, but it’s kind of a team effort, too, and and by us taking those shots deep, we had to continue to take them and I wish I’d taken one more at the end, but that’s the way it goes. Even though we carried the ball a lot, our quarterback played great. He really managed the team. He’s only a sophomore but all the leadership came out of him tonight. He’s a quiet kid (and) a 4.0 student so yeah, our quarterback Payton Clark really stepped up the leadership. When it started to get chippy he was cool, calm and collected. Really proud of him, but I’m really proud of everybody. We didn’t play our best football at time tonight but we played just enough to win. I think it was the energy in the stadium and what was on the line, but it’s been 6 years since we’ve won a league title so I’m happy for the kids. We might not be so happy on Monday when we crack the film open, but I’m happy right now. We’ve got time to clean things op but at the end of the day we’re going to the playoffs with a seven-game winning streak and two of our losses are to teams that are projected to be in our division. No easy games any more.”
For Rialto Eisenhower, it was an opportunity missed. The Eagles had the chance at a San Andreas League title and just couldn’t get in the end zone after the first quarter. Brothers Kevonn and Kevin Osborne are explosive separately and in tandem, but there’s balance missing from the offense to give the Osbornes an outlet, a decoy, a break. Solid on defense with athletes at linebacker and in the secondary, there’s a good shot that this team can win a playoff game or two in the right division.
Rialto Eisenhower head coach Al Brown: “It’s another football game on a Friday night. It’s Friday night. It’s football. I think we played well – 13-9 – you can’t complain about that. We had some opportunities that we just didn’t capitalize on, so there’s some things we need to clean up going in to the playoffs. We’ll make those adjustments and move on and see what happens. It’s the loss. It’s not the end of the world. There’s a lot of other things going on so us losing a ball game is not the end of the world. And we lost. There’s no excuses. We had our chances to win and I’ll give them credit. That’s a good football team, and I like to think that we’re a pretty good football team. To play a team like this, come down to a league championship 13-9? I know everybody picked them guys to run us over, so maybe now we get a little bit of respect. They had to earn that tonight. We’ll chalk it up and regroup and go back to work on Monday. Win or loss we’d look at what we did right and what we’d do wrong, fix it and move forward. We can’t dwell on the past. The good Lord put our eyes in front of us so we can see what’s ahead of us. We don’t stay in the moment right here, we have to keep thinking ahead. We think with the end in mind, and right now we lost this game tonight but we’ll come back again and give this thing a run for the playoffs. Aye, 13-9 is a great high school football game, and both teams have been on a run, and both teams been scoring 40-50 a game – this is beautiful right here. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We earned our respect, I think, tonight. They earned the league championship. That’s great for them, but we have our eyes on a different prize now so we’re going to re-focus and see if we can get that done. (Alonzo Brown) did not have a catch tonight. The double- and triple-teamed him. Their game plan was to take him out and make us use someone else, which was good, but against we had our opportunities but we didn’t throw the ball on some occasions when we had the opportunity to throw it to him. They came in and their focus was t take him our of the game, and they did a great job of that. We tried to go to some other guys but those other guys didn’t make plays. We’ve got to build those guys up. We’ll be ready for it.”
Summit – 7 – 3 – 3 – 0 — 13
Eisenhower – 6 – 3 – 0 – 0 — 9
First quarter
E – Kevo.Osborne 10 run (kick failed), 4:32
S – Mikaele 2 run (Chavez kick), 2:10
Second quarter
S – Chavez 26 FG, 0:27
E – Laguna 38 FG, 0:00
Third quarter
S – Chavez 24 FG, 2:37
Fourth quarter
No scoring
Team statistics
Total plays – Summit 52; Eisenhower 37.
First downs – Summit 12; Eisenhower 4.
Penalties – Summit 10-117; Eisenhower 3-35.
Turnovers – Summit 2; Eisenhower 2.
Individual statistics
Rushing – Summit: Mikaele 21-90, Owens 13-43, James 2-25, Tufaga 2-19, Clark 2-(minus-2); Eisenhower: Kevo.Osborne 14-26, Kevi.Osborne 3-29, Pointer 1-2, Parker 1-(minus-10).
Passing – Summit: Clark 2-8-0-58; Eisenhower: Kevo.Osborne 4-7-0-110.
Receiving – Summit: Beck 1-47, Tufaga 1-11; Eisenhower: Parker 1-54, Kevi.Osborne 2-41, Pointer 1-15.
Interceptions – None.
Photo by Fontana Herald News
INLAND FIELDHOUSE 