San Marcos won a close one of the weekend, but what's new?

The Southern California Varsity White team defeated rival San Pasqual 20-17, moving to 4-1 and 1st place in the SoCal Varsity White San Diego North division. But it's worth noting that all but one game San Marcos has played has been decided by less than a try.

On December 8 San Marcos beat Mira Mesa 40-38. A week later Fallbrook went down 28-27. After a Jan 12 shutout of Alta Vista 48-0, it was back to the close games with a 34-33 loss to Carlsbad. And now this weekend's 20-17 win over San Pasqual.

Head Coach john Coady chalks it up to the SD North division being really competitive. But the other reason has been depth. San Marcos has a habit of running out to a lead, making some lineup changes, and seeing the opposing team come back. Even this past weekend, the score could well have been different had the team's usually dependable goalkicking not had a bad day. San Marcos ran out to a 15-0 lead on three tries, saw San Pasqual make it 15-12 on tries either side of halftime, and then only just held on.

"I think we're showing that San Diego Varsity White is a really good competition," said Coady. "But we also nee dto learn how to close out games."

Leading the way for San Marcos is prop Jacob Hommel, who has set the tone up front, with flanker Robert Gacula playing solidly all season.

The backs are led by center Steven Conforto and wing Camdyn Meiner, while Cody's son, Dakota, has continued to play well at flyhalf and uses his experience in the game (not uncommon for a coach's son) to identify space and put his teammates into good positions to score. 

It all seems to be coming together for San Marcos, but you know they'd like to win a few games by some wider margins.

Meanwhile, also in SoCal Varsity White, Santiago continues to lead in the Inland Division and Servite controls the OC Division. La Jolla had a non-league game this weekend, and so remains undefeated in San Diego South.

The other big game of the weekend was Carson v Wilson. Carson went into the game 4-0 thanks in part to a bit of a shocker 17-12 win over Wilson two weeks ago. This week was the rematch.