Eagles’ defense muffles Mesa

NEWPORT BEACH — Estancia High seniors Sean Ulrich and Connor McKendry have never known a time when the bell didn’t belong to Estancia.

Ever since the two defensive ends were freshmen, they’ve always heard the bell clanging and crowd roaring after the annual cross-town rivalry game and known that they’d be the ones eating at Newport Rib Company afterward.

Why stop now?

“This is our biggest game by far,” said McKendry, who forced a fumble to give the Eagles (5-4, 2-0 in the Orange Coast League) their last possession of the game. “It’s the city championship, and it’s basically the league championship, because we’ll be league co-champions no matter what we do, even if we lose next week.”

The Eagles, who now have a three-game win streak, have one more regular-season game against Laguna Beach. If they beat the Breakers, they would win the league title outright. Costa Mesa will play Calvary Chapel Thursday.

The 13 points the Eagles’ defense allowed Costa Mesa (1-8, 1-1) to score Friday night was one of its best outputs this season. Only Calvary Chapel scored fewer points against Estancia, when the Eagles walked away Monday having held Calvary to just one touchdown in a 10-3 win.

Estancia also held Bolsa Grande and La Quinta to 13 points in earlier meetings this season.

“From Coach [Jeff] Brinkley and the staff [at Newport Harbor], I’ve learned to be calm, but we’re always intense,” said Estancia coach Mike Bargas. “It doesn’t matter who we play. They could have very well beaten us and it’s a great match and we had great fan support on both sides. It is a big game, but now we’re going to get ready for Laguna Beach.”

Antwon Byrd found the Estancia end zone just 19 seconds into the matchup, when he ran 72 yards on a pitch from Costa Mesa quarterback Brian Waldron. He broke through a tackle attempt, and kept running down the left sideline for the score.

Byrd scored again right before halftime, on a 48-yard touchdown pass from Waldron. Estancia answered by blanking the Mustangs for the next two quarters.

“The first half, we gave up a few big plays, but our coach gave us a really inspirational speech at halftime that helped us do what we had to do,” McKendry said. “So, in the second half we came out focused. Except for a few minor fighting things, I think we played pretty darn good in the second half.”

Both teams were called simultaneously for personal fouls in the third quarter as Estancia was punting, but the Eagles had another for a late hit, and were hit with a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“Our goal was to beat everybody and to play hard, and we did,” Bargas said. “I didn’t like the fact that we blew our cool a few times and we had a lot of penalties, and we’ve got to clean that up. If you want to go into the playoffs deep, you can’t make mistakes.”

When the Mustangs, down, 14-6, were looking to answer the Eagles’ second score of the game, senior outside linebacker Eddie Tomasek recovered a fumble to give Estancia the ball. He also intercepted a pass from Waldron after the Eagles’ line pushed a Mustang back for a three-yard loss.

Estancia may still have one game left to play at Davidson field but, Friday night, it seemed the Eagles had traveled full-circle from their season-opening 35-6 loss to Aquinas at the same venue. The 41 points Estancia scored was its highest offensive output of the season, and the defense was able to make the necessary stops to take the Mustangs out of their rhythm.

Costa Mesa earned six first downs on a night when it was a rarity to see the Eagles missing tackles, or letting players slip through them, which was a 180-degree turnaround from the Aquinas game.

“We’ve gotten better every week, and if we can do that, we’ll give people some competition,” Bargas said. “It’s nice. I don’t what else to say.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or at soraya.mcdonald@latimes.com.