STUDIO CITY – A beautiful concept of football revolves around the fact that there is no truly correct way to play. The matchup between Harvard-Westlake and Royal truly exemplified a tale between two different teams.
The Harvard-Westlake ground attack was enough to beat Royal, 25-14, in a non-league matchup on Friday. The Wolverines showed they did not need to pass to stay in the game, while Royal went with an all-out air attack.
The emphasis on the Wolverines’ ground attack came as the result of losing their starting quarterback in week one.
“We put our best player with the ball in his hands,” said Wolverines head coach Aaron Huerta. “When you don’t have a guy that can throw the ball every play, we got to figure it out. The kids figured it out and we had a lot of fun tonight.”
The Wolverines’ non-stop ground attack helped end a quick scoreless first quarter. In the first half, the Wolverines only threw one pass for 7 yards while rushing the ball 23 times for 88 yards.
On the flipside, the Highlanders only rushed the ball six times for 25 yards (one time in the first quarter) while throwing the ball 13 times. Of those 13 passes, six were completed for 75 yards.
The first touchdown scored in the game came off a 3-yard rushing touchdown for the Royals by Jonathan Arreola. The Wolverines would answer before halftime with a fourth down 1-yard rush touchdown of their own by Ellis Robinson.
The Wolverines took the lead heading into halftime after Robinson converted a two-point conversion and pushed the lead to 8-7.
Royal remained a pass-heavy team coming out of halftime but soon learned they had to go to the ground game a bit more. A more even split kept the Highlanders in the game running the ball 10 times and throwing 14 in the second half.
Costly penalties and the inability to run the ball were enough for Robinson and the Wolverines to capitalize. Robinson ended his day with 17 carries for 113 yards and three touchdowns despite being taken out a couple of plays due to a hit to the chin.
“Every game I’m trying to go over 100 yards,” said Robinson. “It’s important for us to keep our head in the game and get as many yards as possible. At the end of the day, it’s about being able to bounce back from our loss we had last week and losing our quarterback early in the season. That’s what we did today.”
Royal kept attacking but the Wolverines defense came up big with a sack and an interception in the fourth quarter. The Wolverines had outscored the Highlanders 17-0 before the Royal run game unleashed a 51-yard rush by Caden Pugh.
The Highlanders capitalized with their first passing touchdown of the day and even recovered an onside kick. However, on the ensuing play, they would throw another interception that would seal the game.
“Whenever you’re coming off a week that we did last week, it’s really hard to get into it mentally,” said Highlanders head coach Michael Puopolo. “Today we felt like there were some holes we could exploit through the air. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and we got outcoached and outplayed. Hats off to Harvard-Westlake for how they played tonight.”
