TWO-MINUTE DRILL

Oct. 17, 2006 12 AM PT

While the Newport Harbor High football team returned to the Sunset League with a 21-13 victory over previously unbeaten Esperanza Friday night, the spector of consecutive road games against Los Alamitos (Thursday at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach) and Edison (Oct. 27 at Huntington Beach High) left Sailors Coach Jeff Brinkley a small window to celebrate.

“It’s like we’re already in the playoffs and we started with the quarterfinals,” Brinkley said Sunday. “Just like going deep in the playoffs, it seems that every week we’re playing a good team, so we have to put [the Esperanza win] behind us.

“We start our league schedule against two teams that have been to the Division I final the last two seasons.”

Esperanza lost to Loyola, 49-42, in last year’s title game, while Los Alamitos fell to Long Beach Poly, 21-6, in the 2004 title clash.

Edison, which reached the Division I title game in 2001, advanced to the semifinals in Division I (now the Pac-5 Division) last season.

Newport Harbor (4-2) has now strung together back-to-back wins against Esperanza, ranked No. 5 in the Pac-5 Division last week, and Mira Costa, ranked No. 4 in the Western Division at the time. But the Sailors have failed to substantially impress voters in the CIF polls.

Newport Harbor is on the fringe of the Pac-5 Top 10 released Monday, as one of two “others receiving votes.”

Esperanza is ranked No. 8 and Los Alamitos is ranked No. 10.

Corona del Mar (5-2), on a four-game winning streak that included victories over Newport Harbor and Villa Park, remains No. 2 in the CIF Southern Division poll.

Anaheim (6-0) is ranked No. 1, while Cypress (6-0) sits at No. 3.

The Sea Kings face No. 4-ranked Laguna Hills (4-1) Friday at 7 p.m. at Mission Viejo High.

The rain that preceded 7 p.m. kickoffs all around Orange County Friday night was so concentrated, Sage Hill School Coach offensive coordinator Brad Gossen told Lightning head coach Tom Monarch it reminded him of the kind of movie rain that elvated special effects technitians dump in buckets on actors below.

It was not unlike the famous Gene Kelly dance number performed in the 1952 screen classic “Singin’ in the Rain.”

The Lightning home crowd had thinned out considerably by the end of the game, and the wet weather surely had a part in that.

The Sage Hill scoreboard shorted out in the first quarter and the announcer’s microphone also wasn’t working for part of the game, requiring fans to focus to follow the action.

TWO-MINUTE DRILL

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