Eagles’ bright spot: Mendez

NEWPORT BEACH — In a sea of mistakes, Estancia High running back Carlos Mendez provided a spinnaker of highlights.

Mendez, a junior, produced 118 yards rushing on 14 carries for the Eagles in Friday night’s 35-6 season-opening loss to Aquinas of San Bernardino at Newport Harbor.

He was one of the few bright spots for Mike Bargas in his debut as head coach — along with Mike Morley’s 12-yard touchdown pass to Eddie Tomasek, Estancia’s only score of the game.

“He was a bright shining star,” Bargas said. “We’ve got to work on fundamentals. We’ve still got to learn to catch and we’ve got to learn to tackle, and we’ll get better hopefully.”

Still, Bargas’ Eagles inspired hope, and when Tomasek found the end zone, the crowd of Estancia fans filling the home-side bleachers stood and roared to life.

“The guy that makes the least amount of mistakes is going to win the football game, and they had the least amount of mistakes,” Bargas said.

The Eagles were fooled twice with punt fakes on fourth downs, which both resulted in touchdowns for the Falcons.

Dwaine Radden scored touchdowns for the Falcons on both fakes, running 44 yards for the score in the second quarter, and 49 yards for the second one.

The team also had a problem shoring up holes to stop running back Radden, who finished with 250 yards and two touchdowns on 24 carries.

“There’s a lot of little holes in the dyke,” Bargas said. “We’ve got to work on tackling. They didn’t have that many guys. Our stamina was OK, but our tempo, we need to pick it up a little bit.”

Estancia finally scored in the fourth quarter on a 47-yard drive, when Morley connected with Tomasek on fourth down after two failed pass attempts. However, he was unable to find Brian Valencia in the end zone, and the two-point conversion failed.

Playing at Newport Harbor wasn’t an ideal situation for the Eagles and may have even provided some home-field disadvantage. The field at Newport Harbor was still torn up, filled with divots from summer practice.

“It’s in pretty shape,” Bargas said. “I haven’t seen it this bad in a long time. I’m not sure what the story is, and it’s the first time we’ve been out on this football field. It doesn’t matter. It’s a slow field, but we’re slow too.”

Bargas and his team will have to regroup quickly because of the short week ahead.

Today will be spent analyzing tape from the Aquinas game and also preparing to play at Bolsa Grande Thursday.

“Luckily for us, it’s week zero,” Bargas said. “And we’ve got nine more games guaranteed to get better.”

The Eagles play at Bolsa Grande Friday at 7 p.m.