The Acorn's High School Football Game of the Week

ADAM DAVIS/Acorn Newspapers SWARMING DEFENSE-Oak Park's Kyle Benton, right, brings down Calabasas' Bobby Sokolowski during the teams' Week 2 matchup. OPHS hosts Camarillo Friday at 7:30 p.m. Last week Oak Park beat Los Angeles Baptist 31-13 to improve its record to 4-0. Fol- lowing the win, Eagle head coach Dick Billingsley said it'll be a challenge for his team to continue its unbeaten streak when they host Camarillo Friday night.

Although Camarillo lost its first three games of the year, the Scorpions picked up their first win last week by beating Ventura 20-10.

According to Billingsley, the Eagles will have to play their best game of the season against the Scorpions to win.

"I have a great deal of re- spect for (Camarillo) coach Dennis Riedmiller over there," Billingsley said.

"For us to win, we are go- ing to have to do a good job stopping three plays. We will have to stop the counter boot, the power sweep and their regular counter plays. We have to stop those plays so we can force them to run plays they aren't as comfortable with," he said.

With Camarillo's star quar- terback Samson Szakacsy lost for the year due to a foot in- jury, Oak Park will shift its fo- cus to new Scorpion quarter- back Trevor Gavin.

Gavin completed 12-of-19 passes last week for 174 yards, and while scouting the game, Billingsley was im- pressed with the new ACHS signal-caller.

"He threw the ball very well," Billingsley said. "There were a couple of fade patterns where he seemed to throw the ball right on the money."

Oak Park has some offen- sive weapons as well.

Quarterback Darren McGee has had a fine season thus far. He's thrown for 513 yards in four games, including a season- high 192 yards last week against Los Angeles Baptist.

The Eagle running game has been successful, too, with jun- ior Kyle Shorten getting most of the carries.

Shorten's already rushed for 535 yards, including 112 last week and 201 against Newbury Park two weeks ago.

"I've been very impressed with Kyle so far this year," Billingsley said. "He is so quick and short and he's not afraid to run with the ball."

Billingsley said one of the major components to his team's success early on has been the play of its young offensive line.

"The most important thing for them is to get used to the speed of the game at the varsity level which is very different from the JV level," Billingsley said.

"It's like taking your car out for a drive on the street as op- posed to NASCAR."

Oak Park will try to avenge its loss to Camarillo last year, when they were defeated 31-21.

Billingsley said the team needs to have better ball control to change the outcome this time around.

"We can't turn the ball over like we did in last year's game," Billingsley said. "Their kicking game is very good, too, so we need to a good job stopping them on defense so they don't put us all the way back inside the 5- yard line when we start our of- fensive drives."

"Even though we need to im- prove in some aspects," he said, "I am glad that we have started out 4-0 this year."