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Football St. Anthony

High School Football Preview: St. Anthony vs. La Salle

The Homecoming game at Clark Field tonight at 7 is a matchup between two Del Rey League foes who are both receiving votes in the CIF-SS Division 9 poll. St. Anthony (3-4, 1-0) is coming off consecutive victories and La Salle (4-2, 0-1) has lost it’s last two games.

“The kids are working hard and feeling good coming off two wins in a row,” St. Anthony coach Mario Morales said. “We’ve made young-guy mistakes and I think we’re learning from that. We’ve gotten better over the last couple of weeks. The best thing is that (this team’s) attitude is really good and they’re pretty eager to keep learning which is pretty cool.”

St. Anthony opened up its league schedule at home last week with a win over Harvard-Westlake thanks to a strong performance from the Saints offense. Running back Sone Aupiu scored three touchdowns, and receiver Riley Jenkins caught his seventh touchdown of the season.

READ MORE about Aupiu

READ MORE about Jenkins

Jenkins said that he thinks the Saints success has a lot to do with the way coach Morales approaches the game.

“Coach Morales is more of a life coach,” Jenkins said. “He relates football to life in a lot of his talks after practices or after games. I feel like the things I learn on the football field are going to go a lot deeper than just St. Anthony football.”

La Salle is led by freshman Richard Munoz who is averaging almost 200 yards passing per game with 15 touchdowns. St. Anthony beat La Salle 56-31 last year.

“They’re playing a lot better than they did last year and have a pretty good football team,” Morales said. “We’re excited to see what’s going to happen on Friday.”

JJ Fiddler
JJ Fiddler is an award-winning sportswriter and videographer who has been covering Southern California sports for multiple newspapers and websites since 2004. After attending Long Beach State and creating the first full sports page at the Union Weekly Newspaper, he has been exclusively covering Long Beach prep sports since 2007.
http://The562.org