GARDEN GROVE – Garden Grove relied on quarterback Alejandro Ceja’s legs and a defense that bent but rarely broke to pull out a 21-7 nonleague victory Friday night over crosstown rival Pacifica at Bolsa Grande High.
Ceja rushed for 113 yards and two touchdowns, and the Argonauts (2-1) stopped Pacifica (1-2), trailing by just a touchdown, inside their 10-yard line midway through the fourth quarter.
Jordan Antunez ran for 94 yards and scored with 1:02 to play to secure the triumph as Garden Grove, which reached two successive CIF-SS Southern Division title games in part behind a dynamic passing attack, kept the ball on the ground.
“I like to run the football,” first-year Argonauts head coach Ricardo Cepeda said. “I knew it was going to be a physical, grind-it-out game, and I’ve got four returning linemen from a CIF finals team, so we can run the ball.”
They struggled to do so until the beginning of the second quarter — the teams combined for 43 yards and two first downs in the first quarter — when Ceja took charge. He took off 34 yards, more than the Argonauts had amassed to that point, up the left sideline to the Pacifica 20, then went the same way for 17 and a touchdown three plays later.
Garden Grove didn’t move the ball again until the second half, when Ceja and Antunez took turns on a 69-yard drive, with Ceja – an All-CIF receiver last year – running the final 14.
“Alejandro is a game-breaker, that’s the thing people don’t understand,” Cepeda said. “He can break it at any time.”
Nick Garcia passed for 157 yards and ran for 26 more to lead the Mariners, who got nothing from two long second-quarter drives – the first ended with a missed field-goal attempt, the second on downs at the Garden Grove 31- but answered the Argonauts’ third-quarter touchdown with a quick scoring drive of their own.
Garcia connected on a 22-yard screen pass with Tirek Benjamin, who had six catches for 76 yards, then had runs of 10 and 11 to set up Tristen Williams’ 17-yard TD run.
Pacifica methodically marched from its 22 to the Argonauts’ 6 on its next drive, but Garcia threw three incompletions in the end zone to end the threat and didn’t get the ball again until the final minute.
