Prep football: Rarefied air

Barry Faulkner

NEWPORT BEACH - As the victories mount and the championship banners

multiply, a team’s ability to earn its own niche in Newport Harbor High

football history is becoming increasingly difficult.

The 2001 Sailors, however, put themselves in position to be part of

something unparalleled in the program’s 71 varsity seasons when they

rolled over Woodbridge, 34-7, Friday to clinch the Sea View League

championship.

The win improved Coach Jeff Brinkley’s Tars to 8-0-1, 4-0 in league,

upping the program’s victory total the last three seasons to 32.

Following a 13-0-1 year in 1999 and last season’s 11-3 mark, this year’s

squad can establish a school record for victories in three consecutive

seasons with its next triumph.

The 1992-94 teams went a combined 32-6, while the current three-year

roll is now 32-3-2, heading into Friday’s nonleague date against visiting

Westchester to conclude the regular season.

The victory over Woodbridge also placed this year’s team into an elite

club of six outright league champions at Newport Harbor. Only nine

previous Sailor battalions had been able to call themselves league

champions and this becomes only the third league crown during Brinkley’s

watershed 16 seasons at the helm.

“We’ve averaged more than 10 wins a year the last three,” said

Brinkley, whose team tied the three-year record in somewhat atypical

fashion.

With Woodbridge’s shifting 46 defense limiting the Harbor ground game

to 81 rushing yards, senior quarterback Morgan Craig feasted on man

coverage by the Warrior secondary.

“That’s kind of the beauty of the offense,” Brinkley, the Tars’

offensive architect, said. “If we’re functioning well within the system,

it’s tough to take everything away. We’ve had real good balance this year

and we try to feature the abilities of our athletes. (The Warriors) move

around a lot and pack it in, and when they pack it in, they play man

coverage outside. And Morgan threw the deep ball very well.

Craig connected with senior speedster Adam Kerns for touchdown bombs

of 79 and 46 yards, and also hit him on a beautifully thrown 43-yard

pickup that led to the Sailors fourth touchdown, midway through the third

quarter.

Craig completed 10 of 14 for 215 yards and three TDs and finished the

four-game Sea View slate 40 of 55 (72.7%) for 561 yards and seven TDs. He

is 86 for 124 (69.4%) for 1,132 yards and 17 TDs for the season, with

only two interceptions.

But for a 16-play, 53-yard touchdown drive against the Newport

reserves, capped by a 13-yard scoring pass with 21 seconds left,

Newport’s defense, which leads Orange County in fewest points allowed

(54), would have become only the 11th team in school history to record at

least four shutouts. Teams are averaging six points per game against

Harbor this fall.

Still, the unit, which has only one returning starter from last year’s

CIF Southern Section Division VI runner-up, has now allowed the fewest

points through nine games of any Harbor team after World War II. The 1971

squad surrendered 60 points in its nine-game regular season and did not

advance to the playoffs.

The 1935 Sailors set the ultimate standard for defense, allowing just

33 points in eight contests, an average of just more than four per game.

The 1942 Tars, who lost to Bonita, 39-6, in the CIF lower-division

title game, posted a school single-season record six shutouts in 10

games, in which they allowed 65 points.