South City wins 14th straight Bell Game, 36-6

Spencer Eugenio scores on a five-yard second quarter run for South City High in the Bell Game, on Nov. 4, 2017.

For the 14^th straight season, the Bell tolls for South San Francisco High School.

With no end to the streak in sight, the Warriors topped El Camino, 36-6, on Saturday in the 56^th annual matchup of the crosstown rivals.

“It’s not that difficult (to keep the intensity up), it’s the Bell Game” South City coach Jay Oca said. “These guys are neighbors, they’ve know each other since they were in elementary school. Both teams are going to fight, crawl and scratch to get into the end zone.”

South City’s Spencer Eugenio was the unofficial player of the game, tallying the majority of the Warriors’ offensive yards by rushing for 235 yards on 30 carries and scoring two touchdowns.

“He’s an explosive athlete,” Oca said. “He does everything; he runs the ball, he passes, he catches, he kicks the ball — he does whatever you want him to do.”

El Camino started with the football, but fumbled it away four plays into the game. In a preview of the impact he would have later, Eugenio picked it up for the Warriors. Twelve plays later, Eugenio capped a 58-yard drive with a four-yard touchdown run with 5:29 left in the first quarter, after which he also took in the two-point conversion.

The fumble set a bad tone for El Camino, according to Colts coach Eric Jacobson.

“I felt really good on that first drive and then we put the ball on the ground,” he said. “You can’t have these little things happen in a big game; they multiply.”

Oca agreed.

“That was huge,” he said. “They we kind of driving on us they were eating up yardage, and real quickly that (recovery) emotionally turned us around.”

Eugenio scored again 7:35 before halftime on a five-yard run. Kalvin Pua also scored a touchdown 1:36 before the break to put South City up 24-0 after two quarters (the Warriors tallied a two-point conversion after all three touchdowns).

“I felt it was good to be quick and out, and come out with a boom,” Eugenio said. “Having a hard week of practice went well for us and everything our coaches did prepared us for this.”

While El Camino (3-6) held South San Francisco (also 3-6) scoreless in the third quarter, Pua — who had 122 yards on 25 carries — scored his second touchdown of the game with 6:23 remaining on an eight-yard run. Quarterback Tyson Alapati scored with 2:41 left on a five-yard keeper.

“We just didn’t make plays,” Jacobson said. “They came to play and we didn’t. I think you can tell that by the way they were running the ball.”

El Camino’s only score came with just 28 seconds left in the game, when quarterback Jonas Junio hit Ian Dugas on the right side for a 30-yard scoring pass.

Emilio Urrutia had 38 yards on seven rushes to pace the Colts’ ground game. Junio completed four of 13 passes for 65 yards. South City’s Demetrius Gutu caught the only pass Alapati attempted for a 12-yard gain. In all, South City outgained El Camino with 400 total yards of offense to the Colts’ 173.

“What kept us moving was wanting to run the ball as hard as we can in the last Bell Game for our seniors,” Eugenio said. “There’s a lot of pressure on it, but I feel that us being a team keeps us focused.”
The Colts' last win in the series remains a 35-19 upset in 2003. Jacobson’s disappointment was apparent.

“I thought we had them really well prepared, especially after Capuchino, but another year has gone by,” he said. “Sometimes I hate Novembers. I’ve hated the last 15 Novembers for sure.”
Both teams do get a rare bounce-back week after the Bell Game next Thursday, making up for games that were postponed because of poor air quality caused by last month’s wildfires. El Camino will host Jefferson at 7:30 p.m., while South San Francisco will travel to Woodside.