Laguna Beach football blanks Kennedy, improves to 3-0
Laguna Beach High football coach John Shanahan believes this year’s team could be the best in program history.
Shanahan, in his ninth season in charge, has coached some good squads in the past. Just two years ago, the Breakers beat Diamond Bar to win the CIF Southern Section Division 9 title, the program’s first crown since 1946.
But Shanahan sees the talent of this year’s team as a numbers game.
“We just have a lot more football players than we’ve ever had,” he said. “We go pretty deep, you know, 14 or 15 deep on both sides of the ball. That’s different for us. We normally have seven or eight football players on the field, and we’re trying to hide a couple of guys.”
The talent emerging in the program tends to lead to bigger numbers on the scoreboard too.
Laguna Beach routed Kennedy 51-0 on Friday night in its home opener at Guyer Field, improving to 3-0 this season.
The Breakers shined on defense and special teams, which helped put them in positions to succeed offensively against the Fighting Irish (2-1).
On the third play of the game, Laguna sophomore Will Kimball intercepted a pass over the middle and returned it 30 yards.
Before the night was up, fellow sophomore Wyatt Bogdan and senior Charlie Hunt would add interceptions, and they returned both of theirs for touchdowns.
Hunt’s 40-yard interception return, which came after the ball deflected off a Kennedy receiver, gave the Breakers a 42-0 lead late in the third quarter.
“I just saw it in the air, knew I had to grab it and knew I had blockers blocking for me,” Hunt said. “In practice, we always do drills for interceptions, just find a man and block him. I knew the boys had my back.”
The Breakers were stymied early by the Kennedy defense, as senior standout Deon Bynum jumped a route to intercept a pass on Laguna Beach’s second possession. Another Kennedy interception on the next drive, by Isaiah Sotelo, was negated only because Laguna Beach senior quarterback Jackson Kollock was past the line of scrimmage when he threw the ball.
“We probably should have run the ball more early, but we tried to do some different things,” Shanahan said. “We’ve just got to find a way to start more efficiently next week.”
Laguna Beach would get things rolling soon enough. Breakers senior running back Redmond Chesley scored on a 22-yard run up the middle late in the first quarter to open the scoring.
After Bogdan’s pick-six, which was deflected near the line of scrimmage, Breakers senior Declan Murray added a pair of one-yard touchdown runs later in the second quarter. The second plunge, in the final minute of the half, gave the hosts a 28-0 halftime advantage.
Left tackle Hudson Mills, left guard Cole Stal, center Charlie Kelly, right guard Fletcher Liao and right tackle Ollie Lyles were successful all night opening up lanes for Breakers running backs and giving Kollock time to throw.
Kelly and Liao, team captains along with Kollock and senior receiver Luke Jolley, are also stalwarts of the defense line.
“We played together,” Kelly said. “That’s our main thing. We played with a lot of fire, and we thought every single down was 0-0. We played like it was a CIF championship game every single play tonight, and I couldn’t be more proud of our team.”
Kennedy used a quarterback tandem of senior Devin Almazan and junior Derek Almazan, who alternated possessions. But the Breakers held the Fighting Irish to 29 yards from scrimmage in the first half.
Kollock, a Minnesota commit, found Jolley in the right side of the end zone for a 13-yard score on his final completed pass of the game. Then sophomore Jack Hurst took over at quarterback, connecting with junior Grant Regal on a 58-yard touchdown pass late.
It added up to a blowout win for Laguna Beach on the same night that former Breakers standout Ryner Swanson, now a freshman at BYU, caught a pass to help the Cougars upset SMU 18-15 on the road.
The Breakers host Gig Harbor of Washington next Friday night, before returning home for a nonleague showdown against El Dorado on Sept. 20.
El Dorado beat Laguna Beach 21-7 in the first round of the Division 7 playoffs last year, on its way to becoming a CIF finalist.
“We all thought of El Dorado, that was on our minds every single day we practiced,” Kelly said. “I’m just proud that we could bounce back and start the season strong.”
*
Nonleague
Laguna Beach 51, Kennedy 0
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Kennedy 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 — 0
Laguna 7 – 21 – 14 – 9 — 51
FIRST QUARTER
LB — Chesley 22 run (Jolley kick), 0:47.
SECOND QUARTER
LB — Bogdan 15 INT return (Jolley kick), 7:48.
LB — Murray 1 run (Jolley kick), 4:20.
LB — Murray 1 run (Jolley kick), 0:16.
THIRD QUARTER
LB — Jolley 13 pass from Kollock (Jolley kick), 7:37.
LB — Hunt 40 INT return (Jolley kick), 1:32.
FOURTH QUARTER
LB — Regal 58 pass from Hurst (Jolley kick), 3:18.
LB — Safety, 1:02.
INDIVIDUAL RUSHING
K — Talamantes, 8-16.
LB — Murray, 6-37, 2 TDs.
INDIVIDUAL PASSING
K — Dev. Almazan, 5-14-1, 60; Der. Almazan, 2-7-2, 25.
LB — Kollock, 13-29-1, 140, 1 TD.
INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING
K — Bynum, 1-27.
LB — Regal, 1-58, 1 TD; Jolley, 3-56, 1 TD.
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