Woodbridge’s football team, fresh off a 35-14 opening week victory over Cypress, was working hard Wednesday night at University in preparation for Friday’s game against El Modena, the defending CIF Division 7 champion.
The game is Friday at 7 p.m. at El Modena. The game will be the first one of the season for the Vanguards, who are ranked eighth in the CIF Division 4 poll this week.
The Warriors, ranked third in CIF Division 8 polls, practice once a week at University, where they also play their home games.
“It’s just a good change of pace,” said Woodbridge Coach Rick Gibson. “It’s a good thing to practice on the synthetic turf because we’re (practicing) on grass all the time and there is a little more give in the synthetic turf so I noticed over the years we would cramp a little bit more when we didn’t practice here at least once a week.
“I think we’ve been doing it for five or six years now. It’s nice, because it’s cooler, it’s in a different venue and I think every Wednesday practice is usually the best one of the week.”
Gibson and his players have been in high spirits this week after the opening week victory.
“I just thought our defense played very well,” Gibson said. “Offensively, they gave us the ball on great field position with four turnovers, and one of those turnovers was on a pick six too (by Dylan Hutton). It makes things a lot easier when you have that many turnovers.
“I thought we started well. Cypress will be a very good football team when they get their running back (Isaac Hurtado) back and when they figure out who is going to be their quarterback. They will be good.
“I thought our kids for a game one, we took a step forward from the scrimmage so that’s always good. Now we want to improve on what we do when we play El Mo and we’re going to have to: that’s a good footall team.”
Gibson was pleased with the play of quarterback Kyle Hurry, who was making his first start after playing wide receiver last year.
Hurry completed seven passes for 116 yards and rushed for two scores.
“He did very well,” Gibson said. “He scored on a 14-yard run on a play that was basically a broken play. We called a counter play and the snap was a little high and he bobbled it and what we always work on in practice is, instead of trying to hand the ball off and fumbling or running, you just go to the hole where it was called and he did it and our back did the right thing and ran though because it was supposed to go to him and he (Hurry) scored on it. That’s what Kyle brings to the table, he’s calm in that situation; where some people panic, he didn’t.”
