Caceres provides spark for Irvine

IRVINE - Irvine senior Richard Caceres promised his teammates he would do something special to start the second half of Friday night’s game with Santa Ana Valley.

Caceres did just that, returning the opening kickoff of the second half 97yards for a touchdown to help the Vaqueros capture a 28-0 nonleague victory at Irvine.

“In the huddle, right before we came out, I told them, ‘if you guys get me a block, I won’t let you down,’” Caceres said. “Everyone just committed to doing their assignments, worked hard in practice and wanted to clean up the mistakes we made last week and come out as a better football team.”

Caceres also had a 33-yard punt return to set up Irvine’s first score, a 1-yard TD run by Kevin Torres with 1:35 left in the first quarter.

After that, Irvine (1-1) looked to its defense and special teams to control the game against Santa Ana Valley (1-2).

Irvine, which had five turnovers in a 23-10 loss to South Torrance last Saturday, did not have a turnover Friday night.

“We came back to these guys on Monday and said that everything we made mistakes on last week was on us and we can fix it,” Irvine coach Erik Terry said. “These guys re-committed to going back to the basics of fundamentals and really listening to their position coaches and it paid off tonight.”

Irvine moved out to a 14-0 lead on a 3-yard TD run by Torres late in the first half.

Torres sealed the victory with a 30-yard interception return for a TD, his third score of the night, in the third quarter.

Joe Mohr led Santa Ana Valley, passing for 124 yards. Vince Aranda hauled in six catches for 73 yards for the Falcons.