Oaks Christian football team ready to battle rival Nordhoff in CIF semifinals

BILL SPARKES/Acorn Newspapers ARMED AND DANGEROUS—OCHS quarterback Jimmy Claussen leads the Lions’ aerial attack Friday vs. NordhoffOCHS beat Nordhoff, 42-7, at the end of the regular season. Considering all that’s been said and written about in the week leading up to tomorrow night’s CIF semifinal game between TriValley rivals Oaks Christian and Nordhoff, the Lions’ always pragmatic head coach, Bill Redell, felt it necessary to try and provide a little perspective on things.

“Let’s get real here,” said Redell before Tuesday’s practice, “there’s 400 million Chinese people who don’t have any idea Oaks Christian and Nordhoff are playing a football game.”

True, but there are plenty of football fans from Westlake Village to Ojai who certainly do.

Friday’s game will mark the third consecutive year the two teams have faced one another in the Div. XI semifinals, and on paper, it seems there’s very little chance of a different outcome.

The Lions (11-0), winners of 29 straight, are coming off another slaughter of a Division XI opponent, having beaten Pasadena’s La Salle, 63-0, in the quarterfinals. The Rangers (9-3) earned a spot in the final four by defeating Valley Christian, 35-14.

Though it’s only been two years since Nordhoff used a fourth-quarter comeback to defeat Oaks Christian, 35-28, near the end of 2003 regular season, that victory seems light years away.

After all, that year quarterback Jimmy Claussen was still a relatively unknown backup and running back Marc Tyler was only playing second fiddle to current UCLA Bruin Aaron Ware.

The Lions have beaten the Rangers by a combined score of 159-51 since that defeat.

Fast forward to the present and there’s no doubt Nordhoff, which lost to the Lions, 42-7, just three weeks ago (in a game marred by penalties and accusations of poor player conduct) will again have its hands full stopping the high-powered Oaks Christian offense.

Redell said the Lions’ blueprint for success doesn’t change, and neither does the blueprint to stop them.

“Nordhoff’s plan is to control the football and keep our offense off the field,” Redell said. “Anybody who plays us that’s what their plans is. . . . Our plan is to keep our offense on the field, stop their guys and make them punt and get our offense the ball. It’s pretty simple.”

In their first contest of the season, it was the Lions’ ground game that carried them to victory—that and a 95-yard kickoff return by Tyler to start the second half. Claussen had a relatively quiet game (only two touchdown passes and 149 yard passing) against a traditionally hard-nosed Nordhoff defense.

“We have a lot of respect for their program,” Redell said. “They’re very well-coached and they have a tough defense.”

Though Redell contends that all the talk this week about animosity between the two programs has been blown out of proportion, there’s no doubt that onlookers will be watching to see not only if Oaks Christian wins, but how they win as well.

When asked about what’s been said since that controversial Nov. 11 matchup in Ojai, Redell adamantly defended his program.

“I’ve coached high school football for 18 years and have earned a reputation of running a classy program, and this is one of the more classy programs I’ve run,” Redell said. “If anyone has any doubts of that, I invite them to come to any of our practices, any of our meetings, heck, they can be in the locker room at half time and hear what we say. . . .I think a lot that’s been said about us has come from people who don’t have a clue of what’s going on.”