By Alex A. Gonzalez
Temple City — The La Canada Spartans came into Friday night’s game looking to accomplish two goals in their week nine contest against Temple City: End their two-game losing streak, and ruin Temple City’s Homecoming festivities.
The Spartans (5-4) (2-2) checked both boxes and made it look easy in their 42-0 blowout win over the Rams (2-7)(0-4) behind Corey Cheung’s two rushing touchdowns and Macky Plocher’s two passing touchdowns in La Canada’s final road game of the 2022 campaign.
“It was good execution on our part, you know,” said Cheung postgame. “We schemed well this week and were able to execute really well.”
La Canada got off to a fast start and never looked back at the Rams, who struggled to find footing in the opening fame. The Spartans scored on all three possessions in the first 12 minutes of play.
Cheung scored his first touchdown of the night after his offense drove down the field in 11 plays, which was capped off by his 7-yard run with 6:59 left in the first quarter. Then Plocher’s two touchdown passes helped build a 21-0 lead as the opening quarter continued.
His one-play touchdown toss to Trent Care extended La Canada’s lead to 14-0 midway through the first. Then just before the quarter ended, he threw his second touchdown pass to Hayden Dancsecs, who danced around the defense and score on a 4th and five from 32 yards out.
The Spartan’s continued their offensive attack in the second quarter as they started to pull away from Temple City by adding two more rushing touchdowns before the homecoming fireworks.
Fullback Andrew Gevorgian’s 2-yard rushing touchdown came after he bulldozed his way through the Ram’s defense for the team’s fourth consecutive touchdown. Then after a turnover on downs by the Rams, Cheung reached pay dirt for the second time, this time from 13 yards out.
La Canada went into intermission up 35-0 on Temple City.
The Spartans were able to slow their offense down in the second half, as the unit only scored one touchdown in the final 24 minutes of the contest. However, how they achieved their final touchdown of the night confused both the Spartans and the Rams.
Just as the fourth quarter started, Plocher went to handoff the ball but dropped it and was then kicked into the end zone, where Carey recovered it for the touchdown.
The Spartans’ defense was as equally efficient as their offense. They forced the Rams to punt on all of their possessions except four drives. Those four drives that Temple City did not punt ended in either a turnover or failure to convert on fourth down.
“The defense has been good. This is a game where we wanted to prove that our defense was able to execute as well as we could,” Commented Cheung about his team’s defense. “Everyone stuck to their job and read their reads which is something that we haven’t done well, so that’s why we put it to them.”
Rams’ quarterback Jake Jones struggled in the contest as he was constantly pressured when trying to find his favorite target Judah Douglas. The ground game followed suit as Isaiah Douglas could not gain any yardage as La Canada’s front four met him as he received the handoff.
With the win, La Canada will look to make it back-to-back wins next Thursday when they host Polytechnic. Temple City will look to end their six-game losing streak next week when they travel to Monrovia for their final game of the season.
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