Estancia facing uphill road

All week, Estancia High Coach Mike Bargas reminded his players of last week’s letdown. The first-year coach didn’t mince words.

With the opportunity to claim the Eagles’ first outright league football championship since 1989 gone with Laguna Beach pulling out a 17-13 win, Bargas explained why it happened.

“Laguna Beach didn’t beat Estancia. Estancia beat Estancia,” he said as Estancia was forced to share the league crown with cross-town rival Costa Mesa. “No offense to Laguna Beach, but we played with very little emotion. We thought it was going to be a gimme game. No one is going to give you anything, especially in the situation we’re in right now.”

It is playoff time, a time of year that has produced seven straight first-round losses for the Eagles.

Bargas said he has had no reason to let his players know about the program’s playoff struggles because they can make history tonight when the Eagles play host to Irvine in a CIF Southern Section Southern Division first-round game at Newport Harbor High at 7:30 p.m.

A win and the Eagles (5-5) will be the first team since 1980 to advance out of the opening round. A loss to Irvine (7-2), the No. 3 representative from the Pacific Coast League, and the 27-year drought continues.

“These guys read the newspapers,” said Bargas, explaining his reason for not harping on the playoff woes. “At the end, if we played our best and we win, that’s awesome. If we don’t [win], that’s awesome, too. They’ve given us our best since the season started. I expect to go 14 weeks.”

No Estancia team has ever ventured so far. The furthest any of the teams have advanced was to a second game. Not even the 1989 team, considered the school’s best by going 10-0 in the regular season, got so far. That team lost in the first round.

Getting past Irvine won’t be easy. The Vaqueros played two teams from the Orange Coast League, beating Costa Mesa, 37-0, and Calvary Chapel, 27-7. Estancia blew out Costa Mesa, 41-13, in the Battle for the Bell, and edged out Calvary Chapel, 10-7, on a 31-yard field goal as time expired.

The last time Estancia met a team from the PCL in the playoffs was last year, a 44-40 first-round loss to Corona del Mar. A shootout for the Eagles and the closest they’ve been to erasing an opening-round losing streak since 1995. Bargas wasn’t involved last year. But he’s trying to make his own mark and he’s confident in his Eagles, led by their ground attack featuring Carlos Mendez.

The junior has rushed for a Newport-Mesa-area best 1,440 yards and 13 touchdowns. If Mendez runs for 38 yards, he’ll also make history in breaking the school’s single-season rushing record set by Marshall Hendricks in 1999. Bargas figures Irvine, which is allowing 14.4 points per game, will stack the line with its 4-4 defense trying to stop Mendez, opening opportunities for the passing game.

Bargas is counting on quarterback Radames Gutierrez, and the rest of the team, to return to form after allowing defending champion Laguna Beach to win its first league game.

“We’ll bounce back,” Bargas said.

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at [email protected].