Eisenhower ends an amazing season to Kaiser High

Eisenhower coming off an amazing run in the CIF Southern Section playoffs had one more team to conquer Saturday night. Coming off a CIF Southern Section title win against the Highland Bulldogs the team now had to put that behind them and focus on another big game.

On yet another cold night these two CIF champs took to the field. It was clear early on that Eisenhower had their hands full with the D8 CIF Champion Kaiser Cats. Kaiser had a beast of a Running Back that accounted for all of Kaiser High School’s seven touchdowns – Christian Hunter. Eisenhower seemed to struggle to stop the 6’ 190-pound Senior as he sliced his way through the defense with some well done blocking.

The Eagles had some amazing highlights as Davyon “Special” Benton blocked and extra point kick. A majority of the scoring and heavy load was on the backs of the team’s key go-to players Joel Ayala, Jordan Goodloe and Cesar Ayala.

Eisenhower relied on a combination of ground and air assaults to push their offense down the field. Kaiser on the other hand used a powerful and effective running game that had Eisenhower scratching their heads.

Even though Eisenhower was down three touch downs early they managed to claw their way back into the game and pull within eight points of the Cats. It looked as though Eisenhower would have just under 2 minutes to try and find the endzone as they stopped Kaiser short of a 1^st down, but Davyon Benton was called for a facemask giving Kaiser a new set of downs and sealing Eisenhower’s fate.

Coach Alvin Brown said one of the reasons this game was so hard was because they got away from the game plan that worked so well over the last 13 games, they were looking to Sacramento and the finals rather than going 1-0 each week.

Kaiser Coach Bill Cardosi, when asked how he felt after this win, replied “exhausted”. Coach Cardosi has a connection to Eisenhower as his father was Ronnie Lott’s basketball coach. Coach Cardosi credits the win to “outstanding student athletes and stuck to the game plan and came out victorious”.