By Ron Vrooman <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(South El Monte) – The South El Monte Eagles rallied for two second-half touchdowns to beat visiting Alhambra, 13-12, in the teams’ 2022 opener last Friday night.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
Sophomore quarterback Matthew Medina completed 12 of 22 passes for 222 yards and both of the Eagles’ scores. Senior wide receiver Cristopher Vasquez was on the other end of Molina’s 56 and 59-yard TD throws, and he ended up with a total of four catches for 157 yards.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vasquez, who’s also the Eagles’ placekicker, booted what turned out to be the decisive extra point after scoring South El Monte’s first touchdown midway through the third quarter.\u00a0And, while playing at cornerback on defense, Vasquez intercepted a Bryan Leonard pass in the end zone to thwart an Alhambra scoring threat early in the second quarter.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Eagles needed everything that Medina and Vasquez gave them on a night when the Moors held them to -27 yards rushing. The Moors, who statistically outperformed the Eagles into the third quarter, came up empty on two early drives deep into South El Monte territory and also failed to convert after either of their later touchdowns.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those missed opportunities would prove costly for Alhambra, which managed to take a 12-7 lead on a one-yard run by Cyrus Wu with 3:10 left in the game.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the first play from scrimmage after the ensuing kickoff, Vasquez caught a deflected pass and raced to the end zone to finish a 59-yard scoring play which gave the Eagles a one-point win.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were some silver linings for the Moors despite their nonleague loss. Leonard, a freshman playing in his first varsity game, completed 15 of 28 passes for 212 yards and a touchdown. Senior wide receiver Joshua Soto scored that TD on a 31-yard reception and made 11 catches in all for 172 yards. Wu, a senior running back, was the Moors’ leading rusher with 16 carries for 71 yards.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alhambra will seek its first victory of the season at home against Glendale High on Thursday night, while South El Monte will travel to Baldwin Park this Friday evening.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Ron Vrooman (South El Monte) – The South El Monte Eagles rallied for two second-half touchdowns to beat visiting Alhambra, 13-12, in the teams’ 2022 opener last Friday night.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12816,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hsfootball","category-high-school-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76757,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76756\/revisions\/76757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}