When you analyze the Rio Hondo Prep Academy-Poway High Southern California Regional Division 3-A championship football game Saturday, there are some startling statistical differences.
— Records: Rio Hondo Prep of Arcadia is 12-1. Poway is 6-7.
— Scoring: Rio Hondo Prep has outscored its opponents 562-199. Poway has a 370-315 edge.
— Enrollment: Rio Hondo Prep 106. Poway 2,253.
Put another way, Poway had more players out for football than the entire Rio Hondo Prep Kares’ enrollment — boys and girls combined.
Poway coach Brandon Harris will tell you to forget all the numbers.
What the Titans face in the 6 p.m. start at home is a club that has lost just one game — 28-21 to Torrance — while rolling over 12 opponents including large-school Warren of Downey 43-16 in the Division 7 Southern Section championship last weekend.
Being a private Christian school, Rio Hondo Prep, or just Rio, has two prolific rushers in junior Noah Penunuri (174-1,564-24) and senior Nathaniel Curtis (79-943-14) and a quarterback, Yanick Diaz, who doesn’t throw much but has completed 42 of 81 es for 697 yards and nine TDs with just four interceptions.
Although the Kares don’t have nearly as many linemen as Poway at 225 pounds or bigger, Caeden Holcomb at 6-1, 230, has 73 tackles and three-sport standout Rainn Pollock has five interceptions.
But many of Rio Hondo Prep’s 43 players — 80 percent of the boys in school — go both ways.
Certainly Calpreps.com, one of the organizations that evaluates every school in the state, is impressed as they’ve established the Kares as a slight one-point favorite.
“We’re going to line up our best 11 against their best 11 and see who wins,” Harris said. “They run the ball extremely well. They’re not very big but they have the goal of being the dragon slayer against teams that haven’t taken them seriously. We’re taking them seriously.”
Harris has said ever since the playoffs started to toss out the season records both because of the level of competition — the Avocado League is considered by most the toughest in the section — and because the Titans are clearly a different team after scoring a school record 63 and 62 points in back-to-back games.
“We’re getting better every week,” Harris said. “We were young early-on and then we had some injuries, but we’re coming together at the right time. The players bought in and they never gave up.
“We’ve gotten off to a fast start the last two games and the defense has gotten us the ball back. Getting another home game is huge.”
The play of 1,000-yard rusher Luke Jorgensen, 2,000-yard er Ty Hurst and receivers like Colin McCann have been well-documented.
Harris pointed to another group of players who will be the key Saturday and they all play defense.
Linebackers Marko Kirovski, Peter Wiederman and Jake Tsay, defensive end James Clifford, safety Eli Alsop and McCann, a cornerback, have keyed the defense with the all-around play of McCann (36 receptions for 607 yards and 10 TDs as a receiver, 639 yards on kickoff returns and stellar play on defense) being noted.
Harris shrugs off capturing the section Division 2 title last week with a 62-24 win over Mater Dei Catholic after playing in Division 1 forever.
“We can only play in the division we’re in,” said Harris of the new playoff policy which puts added emphasis on difficulty of schedule. “We were 0-6 in the Avocado League, but we could have won some of those games. We’re playing well now, and that’s all that matters.”
