THE HIGH SCHOOLS / STEVE ELLING : Buena Deflates Air Attack but Pumps Up Ground Game

Rick Scott strode onto the field Thursday night with the Channel League paparazzi in tow. The Buena High football coach, a popular fellow with a pretty good team, was expecting a reception.

Rival coaches eager to take a gander at Scott’s team were there in force and ready to roll. Videotape, that is.

“We knew that since it was Thursday, everybody would be at the game,” Scott said. “There were more video cameras in the stands than there are at Circuit City.

“But we didn’t give ‘em much to look at. We only ran five or six plays.”

This has hardly become an isolated event for the coach who choreographed the vaunted passing attack at Hart before moving to Buena in 1988.

For Scott, who once claimed to know the location of every fast-food drive-through window in the Santa Clarita Valley, smashmouth was a description of the one-bite manner in which he wolfed a cheeseburger.

It is now his bread and butter.

Scott is putting on airs no longer--this is basic football--and his team is 4-1, 2-0 in league play. Buena is flattening its opponents with a punishing attack.

“Our pump broke,” he said. “We just let the air out of the ball now.”

Buena lost four of its first five games last season. Scott then stripped down his offense, retooled it and built it around a running back named George Keiaho who would become the first freshman in state history to rush for 1,000 yards. It marked a distinct change in philosophy for Scott, who coached a long clothesline of pass-oriented teams at Hart that more often than not left secondaries hanging out to dry.

“We started 1-4 and changed, basically, in midstream,” he said. “You can’t go into the season thinking that a freshman is going to carry you, but he did.”

After five games this season, with essentially one full year of running the ground-based offense under its belt, Buena has it down pat. Over the past two weeks, the Bulldogs have set school marks for single-game rushing yardage. Thursday, Buena ran for a record 409 yards in a 49-12 victory over Hueneme. Six days earlier, the team had rushed for 386 yards against Santa Barbara.

“The most unusual thing for me now is that second and eight or third and eight are running plays,” Scott said. “For most college and pro teams, those are definite passes. For us, it’s a fullback trap or a sweep outside.

“Making those calls has been the hardest adjustment.”

Difficult but, considering the supporting cast, not impossible. Keiaho has rushed for 810 yards and 15 touchdowns in 114 carries and is taking aim at former Crespi tailback Russell White’s state career rushing mark of 5,998 yards. Keiaho already has rushed for 1,944 yards in 1 1/2 seasons.

Keiaho (5-foot-9, 185 pounds) is built for the long haul, to be sure. Last season, Scott ordered him to refrain from doing leg squats because Keiaho was too strong. Keiaho needed more leg strength like he needed another vowel in his name.

“He was up around 600 (pounds) and he was getting so bulky in his thighs that he was losing speed,” said Scott, who says Keiaho is better at running sweeps than any high school player he has seen.

In all, Buena has amassed 1,905 yards in its five games, of which 1,493 came on terra firma. Expect more of the same for 2 1/2 seasons more while Keiaho serves as Scott’s terror on firm ground.

Opposite end of the spectrum: At Scott’s former place of employment, Hart, the ground game is spinning its wheels. Hart’s inability to establish a consistent ground attack was underscored Friday in a 21-20 loss to Quartz Hill.

After driving to the Quartz Hill three-yard line with three minutes left, Hart failed to score on two running plays. Even worse, Hart (2-3) fumbled and lost possession on the second attempt.

Scott sympathizes with Hart Coach Mike Herrington, a former assistant. Pass blocking is markedly different from run blocking, and teaching players to shift gears is not easy.

“It’s a different mind-set completely,” Scott said of the difference in blocking schemes. “To pass, you retreat. To run, you move ahead.”

Hart’s running game isn’t moving at all, having accounted for just 252 yards. Much of the rushing yardage has come on draw plays, in which blockers retreat as though a pass is forthcoming.

The team’s leading ballcarrier is Deriek Charles, who has gained 130 yards in 28 carries, or what some backs rack up on a decent night. Sure, Hart has rolled up 1,632 yards in all, but a team should be capable of punching the ball into the end zone when necessary.

For what it’s worth, Hart quarterback Ryan Connors leads area passers with 1,460 yards. Second is Newbury Park’s Keith Smith with 1,263. The combined record of the teams is 2-8.

Horns of a dilemma: It came sporting nature’s own helmet, an intimidating little creature by most accounts. Baaaaaaaad news walked right up to Canyon Coach Harry Welch on Friday night, looked him in the eye, then walked away.

Eating the 50-yard line took precedence.

The scenario was played out at Millikan High in Long Beach, where Canyon defeated the Rams, 34-19. It seems that the Millikan mascot, a medium-sized bighorn sheep, somehow escaped its handlers in the first half and walked onto the field.

A play was run with the sheep on the field before officials noticed its presence. It trotted to within 10 yards of the Millikan huddle, then toward Welch and the Canyon sideline. The animal’s trainer bolted across the field.

“He told us, ‘Grab it by the horns!’ ” Welch said. “I’m thinking, ‘ You grab it! “

Welch said that a couple of his “braver assistants” each took hold of a horn as the trainer arrived to escort the animal back.

Delightful debut: Westlake’s Erik Holcomb always wanted to be a running back. The thing is, so did everybody else on his youth football team.

“There were always about 30 running backs,” Holcomb said.

Some good ones too, such as current or former area standouts Tobaise Brookins (Sylmar), Ontiwaun Carter (Kennedy), Leonice Brown (Crespi and San Fernando), Mukasa Crowe (Chatsworth) and Brian Brison (San Fernando).

Obviously, the position was capably filled. So Holcomb became a receiver, at which he has remained during his high school career.

Until Friday night.

On Westlake’s first play, Holcomb took the handoff at tailback and jetted 80 yards for a touchdown. Coach Jim Benkert’s goal had been realized almost instantaneously.

Holcomb (6-0, 165) was used periodically at tailback in each of the preceding two weeks but made his first start Friday in Westlake’s 28-20 win over Agoura. He finished with 122 yards in 14 carries and scored two touchdowns. In his first four games as a receiver, Holcomb caught 14 passes for 315 yards and three touchdowns.

“Most of the time I was drawing double coverage,” said Holcomb, who has run 100 meters in 10.6 seconds and is considered a solid NCAA Division I prospect as a wideout. “Coach was trying another way to get me the ball.”

He is having a ball in the process. Holcomb might live on Falling Star Avenue in Westlake Village, but his stock is in ascension.

Spiraling upward: Tarik Smith’s head is spinning. So are his footballs.

Smith, a junior at Oak Park, leads area rushers with 816 yards. In five games, he already has scored nine rushing touchdowns and one on a pass reception.

Surprising enough, but Smith also has thrown for two touchdowns on the halfback-option play.

“So far, I’m two for two with two spirals,” he said with a laugh.

Smith (6-0, 185) said that last season he and fellow tailback Brendan Bickley were so inept at the option pass in practice that Coach Dick Billingsley refused to call the play during live action.

“We were terrible,” Smith said. “We’d fumble, throw a duck or throw to the wrong guy.”

There seems to be no ducking Smith and Oak Park this season: the team is 5-0 and off to the best start in school history.