Sea Kings dominate Eagles

SOUTH EL MONTE — With Corona del Mar High starting quarterback Taylor Hughes out with a sore shoulder, Coach Dick Freeman didn’t have to sweat.

Backup Hunter Alder had everything under control.

Alder threw two first-half touchdown passes to Steven Hillgren, and the Sea Kings also used solid defense to top South El Monte, 38-7, in a nonleague game on Friday night.

Alder, a junior, connected on 14 of his 15 passes in the first half. At one point, he completed six in a row.

“I came in with confidence,” said Alder, who said he had been practicing with the first team all week, but didn’t know he would start until the day of the game. “I felt like I had confidence the whole time. Our offensive line just did a great job blocking for us.”

Corona del Mar was up, 7-0, before its offense came on the field. CdM senior linebacker Tom Folks blocked a South El Monte punt on the Eagles’ first possession.

Ford Noe scooped up the ball and ran it 35 yards for the Sea Kings’ first score.

“We practiced that during the week,” Noe said. “[Folks] blocked it, and the ball landed right in my hands. But it was really all of us who made that play. We needed it, because we came out a little flat on defense in the beginning.”

Neither team could score for the rest of the quarter, but Alder found Hillgren early in the second quarter on a 25-yard strike, putting the Sea Kings up two scores.

“[Alder] throws the ball pretty well,” Freeman said. “What worked in practice, we used in the game. We’ve got some pretty good receivers and a pretty good offense.”

On the ensuing kickoff, South El Monte return man Tommy Cogburn danced around for multiple seconds, looking for a seam.

But, Cogburn eventually fumbled the ball, and Sea Kings sophomore Dutch Lamons recovered the ball on the Eagles’ 18.

South El Monte fumbled six times, including five in the first half, and Corona del Mar recovered three.

Alder then threw his only interception on the Sea Kings’ next drive, but the defense immediately responded.

On the very next play, South El Monte quarterback Jose Garay’s long pass downfield was intercepted by Hillgren.

It was the first of three CdM interceptions in the game, with Charlie Albright and Mitch Sands getting the others.

“Our whole goal was to make them take a lot of snaps,” Freeman said. “They’re not really comfortable doing that. The more they handled the ball, the more they had an opportunity to make a mistake, and we took advantage of that.”

Corona del Mar settled for the 14-0 halftime lead, but came out and played effective ball-control offense in the second half.

The Sea Kings’ first possession after the intermission featured six straight runs, with the sixth being Erik Rask’s four-yard score.

“When we got ahead of them, we wanted the second half to be a lot shorter than the first half,” Freeman said in regard to the Sea Kings’ running game. “We were happy to be able to do that.”