Sierra Canyon football tops highly ranked Norco
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CALABASAS — Usually, when a football coach calls a loss a “learning experience,” he isn’t saying what he wants to say. But Sierra Canyon looked like they learned a semester’s worth in losses to Corona Centennial and Servite earlier this month.
On both sides of the ball, for 48 minutes, the Trailblazers dragged, stuffed, outran, and ultimately outplayed Norco, defeating them 35-21 on Friday night at Calabasas High School.
By the time Norco got the ball for the first time, Sierra Canyon had scored in three plays. Trailblazer quarterback Daniel Duran found receiver Dominic Arango-Serna on a crossing route that Serna turned into a touchdown.
Norco turned the ball over on downs on its first possession, and the Trailblazers marched right down the field to score again, capped by a Jason Jones’ 3-yard touchdown run.
Norco then punted, and Duran took a deep shot to Arango-Serna. The ball was slightly underthrown, but Arango-Serna came back to it, shook a tackler, and outran the pursuing Cougars for an 80-yard touchdown.
The score was just 21-0, but the rout was on. Before the Norco fans had even beat the traffic on the drive in, they were down three scores and appeared outmatched.
Duran finished 10 for 15 with 247 yards passing and two touchdowns, looking surgical on the deep ball and making minimal mistakes. Jones carried 15 times for 71 yards and the one score. Khalil Peart added a touchdown on a 2-yard run, and Stanford commit Kamari Ramsey scooped a fumble from Norco’s Kyle Crum at the Sierra Canyon 10-yard line and returned it 90 yards for the score.
Crum finished 12 for 23 and 211 yards passing. The only offense the Cougars found on a consistent basis was scrambles and keepers from Crum, who finished with 58 yards on the ground with two rushing touchdowns. He also connected with receiver Grant Gray for a touchdown in the third quarter to bring it within two scores, but it didn’t feel close.
The plan for head coach Jon Ellinghouse and Sierra Canyon is to become a premier Division-1 powerhouse in the CIF Southern Section. They’ve proven willing to schedule anyone to test their ability, and losses to Centennial and Servite put the Trailblazers in their place.
But make no mistake — Norco is a Division-1 caliber team, too. Coming into the ballgame, they were ranked 7th in California in the Calpreps rankings. Sierra Canyon was 8th, but likely not for much longer.
“I’m a big believer in playing the best because it gets you ready down the road,” said Ellinghouse. “This was just another example, and we went out and put it on them.”
So the Trailblazers proved they could topple a top-10 team. But can they win these games consistently, against scholarship talent, week over week? That’s what Ellinghouse intends to find out. Mission Viejo, the Calpreps 6th-ranked team, waits next week. The Diablos dismantled Alemany a week ago.
By his own admission, Ellinghouse tempered the gameplan with the Trailblazers up several scores at half. They didn’t score in the second half, something he noted was not ideal.
“But the important thing in games like this, is to get out with a win,” he said.