Football: Beckman Holds Off Sea Kings, 42-37, to Win Pacific Coast League Title

Corona del Mar's football team couldn’t do much right for three quarters against Beckman. But the Sea Kings nearly pulled off a wild fourth-quarter rally against the Patriots in their Pacific Coast League title showdown Friday night.

The Sea Kings scored 27 points in the final 8:50 of the game, but when the Patriots secured an onside kick attempt with 39 seconds left in the game, they were finally able to secure a 42-37 victory that gave them the league championship at Newport Harbor High.

Corona del Mar (8-2 overall, 4-1 in league) got a huge boost from its special teams as Cole Cottrell had a punt return for a touchdown, a kick return for another touchdown and nearly returned another punt for a score in the final minute before getting forced out of bounds at the three yard line.

Quarterback Brett Lawson hit Josh Giger with an eight-yard touchdown pass that pulled the Sea Kings to within 42-37.

With 5:31 left in the game, Cottrell dropped a punted ball at the 24-yard line and scrambled back to the 21 to pick it up. He then weaved through the coverage teams and found a lane for a 79-yard return that had cut the Sea Kings' deficit to 42-31. His first score came in the third quarter when he answered a Beckman touchdown with a 90-yard kickoff return that gave the Sea Kings their first points since the game-opening drive.

Cottrell said he had never had a game like this one. “I wouldn’t have it without my boys,” he said.

The Sea Kings scored 14 points in 52-second span after an 11-play drive culminated in Erik Fisher's four-yard touchdown run with 8:50 left in the fourth quarter that cut the defecit to 42-17. The Sea Kings recovered the onside kick and then scored in three plays. Lawson hit junior Troy Reese for a 32 yard pass play to the Beckman nine yard line and then Fisher ran it in on the next play to cut the defecit to 42-24.

After Cottrell’s punt return touchdown, the Sea Kings recovered a fumble at their own 22 yard line with 4:00 left in the game. They drove to the Patriots' 34-yard line, but turned the ball over on downs and they had to burn their timeouts to preserve just enough time for the final desperate rally attempt.

The loss means the Sea Kings will go into the playoffs as the second-place team out of the Pacific Coast League. “We seemed to be out of sync a little bit, but give [Beckman] credit, they’re a good team,” Sea Kings coach Scott Meyer said.

The Patriots had a combined 179 yards rushing from Erik Kim and Brian Brooks, including a 77-yard touchdown run by Brooks that came two plays after Cottrell’s kickoff return had trimmed Beckman's lead to 28-10 early in the third quarter. The Patriots also intercepted two passes and returned them for touchdowns, the second of which by Brian Dewey seemed to put the game out of reach at 42-10 late in the third quarter.

Meyer said that despite the loss, his team has played well this season and has shown that they should be a threat in the CIF Southern Section's Southern Division playoffs. The Sea Kings were the No. 1 ranked team in the division's coaches' poll this week, with Beckman (8-2, 5-0) at No. 2.

Meyer said his team will just look at where they made their mistakes and make the corrections. He’s confident the effort will be there. “They never quit all year long," he said. "They never quit, no matter what the score was and tonight we just put ourselves in a little bit too big a hole to come back ... and we still almost did.”

Playoff pairings will be announced by the section office on Sunday and first-round games will take place next weekend. A league's first-place finisher is likely to be paired against another league's third-place team, and second-place finishers often are paired against each other. The Southern Division championship game is set for Friday, Dec. 9.