Newport Harbor girls’ flag football beats Huntington Beach for share of league title
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It has been nearly a month since the Newport Harbor High girls’ flag football team was totally shut down by rival Huntington Beach.
The Oilers won 18-6 in the Sunset League game on Sept. 16, with the Sailors getting their only points on a punt return.
Monday night offered a chance at redemption.
“To turn from that to this is really great,” Newport Harbor junior quarterback Scarlett Guyser said, after she helped author a 40-21 win in the league finale at Cap Sheue Field.
Newport Harbor (20-4, 10-2 in league) shares the league title with Huntington Beach (21-4, 10-2) for the second straight year.
The teams, both of which are ranked top five in the country by MaxPreps.com, now prepare for the CIF Southern Section Open Division playoffs that begin next week.
Sailors coach Jason Guyser, who said last week’s Battle of the Bay win over CdM was his team’s best showing of the year, found a new candidate for that category with Monday’s statement victory.
“I told them afterwards that I didn’t think they could play better than they did against CdM, and then they did,” he said. “This was an unbelievable performance, especially just the way it started out. We had a really bad offensive series, they have a short field, they go down and score on their first play. Right away, we’re behind the eight ball in a really tough spot, and we just battled.
“It didn’t faze us when we gave up scores. We’re not used to giving up points, so to give up 21, that’s a lot for us. That’s not normal. So we had to really bring it offensively, and we did.”
The rivals went back and forth, with Newport Harbor taking a 20-14 halftime lead as Scarlett Guyser had a seven-yard scamper for a score, a 17-yard touchdown pass to Blakely Irvine and a 27-yard strike to Emma Yokoi. The host Oilers responded on a pair of touchdown passes from senior quarterback Roxie Shaia to sophomore Kayden Foley.
Huntington Beach drove for a score to open the second half, with Shaia connecting with Brianna Massion on a 20-yard touchdown pass. After the conversion pass, also to Massion, the Oilers had the lead back at 21-20.
But they were blanked for the final 17:33 of the contest, as Newport Harbor beat Huntington Beach for the third time in four total meetings this season.
Shaia said her team’s passing game was a bit off, and the energy was low from the beginning.
“We’re OK,” Shaia said. “I’m not worried at all. I know we’re going to do good in playoffs. We just all had a bad game, and we’re just going to shake it off. We’re still half league champs, so I’m good with that.”
Newport Harbor got its second touchdown run from Scarlett Guyser. After a Huntington Beach three-and-out, Guyser connected with Skylie Cid on a five-yard score over the middle.
The Oilers again went three-and-out, then Guyser connected with freshman Sammy Palmer over the middle for an 11-yard score to provide the final points of the game.
Newport Harbor’s Jocelyn DeTemple secured an interception deep in the red zone toward the end of the game, to put an exclamation point on the Sailors’ win.
“I was shocked,” Scarlett Guyser said. “We played really well against CdM, and so I thought that put us in a good position, but I never thought we’d play this well. I mean, we still got scored on — 21 points — and managed to win by almost double, so that’s really good.”
Playoff brackets will be released Friday at 2 p.m. Newport Harbor believes it will most likely earn the No. 2 seed in the Open Division, which would put it on the opposite side of the bracket as JSerra, the top-ranked team in the country.
“It’s better being the No. 2 seed,” Cid said. “JSerra is a really good team, and I’d rather play them in the finals, have more practice and preparation for. They’re a great team, they’re our biggest competition, so it’s nice being right behind them.”
