Venice Football No Match for Chaminade

Venice High head football coach Angelo Gasca knew his team would have to play better than it had in its first game to have a chance to upset Chaminade on Friday night in West Hills.

The Gondoliers had rallied from a 21-point deficit in the second quarter to stun Harvard-Westlake in their opener, but the opponent Friday was much more formidable. Chaminade returned 16 starters from last year's CIF Southern Section Western Division semifinalist team--including its entire offensive line.

That experience up front proved to be the difference, as the Gondos were simply overpowered on the line of scrimmage in a 41-21 defeat that evened their record at 1-1 heading into their bye week.

Chaminade was playing its first game on its new blue synthetic turf field and fans packed the stadium to cheer the host Eagles on.

"It wasn't the blue turf that beat us, it was the guys in blue jerseys," Gasca said. "They were just too good."

This time, Venice did not fall far behind. In fact, it took a 7-6 lead early in the second quarter on junior linebacker Dayrian Clark's 23-yard fumble return. However, Chaminade regained the lead on Terrell Newby's five-yard run and took a 13-7 lead into halftime.

"We couldn't run the ball and we couldn't block," said Gasca, who watched Newby run through the Gondos' defense for 276 yards and five touchdowns. "When you can't run and you can't stop the run, you aren't going to win many games."

Venice had one advantage heading into the intersectional matchup, having already played whereas Chaminade was making its season debut. It showed in the first half, as the host Eagles committed numerous penalties and quarterback Logan Scott fumbled twice.

As Gasca said leading up to the game, senior quarterback Dean Sarabia started but sophomore Alex Diamont, who had replaced Sarabia late in the second quarter and engineered all of Venice's scoring drives against Harvard-Westlake, also got his share of snaps.

"Dean played the first two series of each half and threw a couple of picks, but otherwise I thought he did well," Gasca said. "Alex played quite a bit, too, and looked very composed despite taking some big hits."

One loss, especially to a team ranked No. 1 in the Western Division, isn't cause for panic--not for a veteran coach like Gasca who prefers scheduling quality opponents to toughen his team up for the playoffs.

"I'm still convinced we'll be very good by the end of the season," he said. "We've played very strong teams. Harvard-Westlake is better than people thought and Chaminade is the favorite to win CIF."

Harvard-Westlake bounced back from its season-opening 34-27 loss to Venice with a 51-14 rout of Fairfax, the defending City Section Division II champion and Venice's Western League rival.

In fact, only two Western League teams emerged from Week 1 with victories. Westchester improved to 2-0 by blanking Cleveland 38-0 and University snapped a 24-game losing streak by thrashing Animo South Los Angeles 46-6. Palisades lost 24-21 at El Camino Real and Hamilton fell at home to Washington 20-14.

Venice returns to action Sept. 23 when it hosts St. Francis of La Canada, which won its opener 31-28 at Arcadia.