He walked 500 miles to get to his game

By Michael Ashacraft --

Eli Cid walked 500 miles from Mexico to get to the Saturday's game.

Of course, the Santa Monica College lineman was kidding.

But he did suffer a mishap this week, and he had to walk a loooooong way.

He was nabbed by immigration agents in an undercover operation Tuesday when he was going to work. Eli, who is a naturalized citizen, didn't have his papers with him, so off they carted him to the border.

At the detention facility, U.S. authorities realized their mistake, apologized and released him, he said.

Eli had to walk what seemed like endless miles -- hence the hyperbole -- to Phoenix where his friend picked him up and drove him to the Greyhound Bus terminal. He rode back.

Good thing he made it on time. An offensive lineman, Eli was thrown in the game on defense in the second quarter and came up with a tackle that ignited howls of delight on the Corsair side. Given only one chance to play Saturday he capitalized.

Eli Cid's misadventures weren't the only ones for the Corsairs, who lost 22-43 their homegame Saturday against Pasadena City College.

"Our guys played with a lot of effort and a lot of heart," said Coach Kelly Ledwidth. "The mistakes we made today are going to prevent you from winning a game. We shot ourselves in the foot quite a bit today with simple mistakes, mistakes we didn't make last week. Pasadena is too good of a team to make mistakes like that against."

The Lancers drew first blood, but Santa Monica responded with a breakthrough run down the sideline. Running back Hassan Biggus jumped to lightspeed and nobody could catch him. SMC was losing only slightly 7-8.

Pasadena brought both a solid passing and running game to test the Santa Monica defense, which struggled to tackle the carriers who combined brutal strength with some fancy footwork.

The Lancers made it 7-15.

After kickoff, the Corsairs were unable to score, in what in retrospect was an ill omen.

Santa Monica forced a punt in the 2nd quarter and made a bid to stay in the game. Tariq Brown caught a pass up the middle and squeezed through two guys on the runinto the open and sprint for the touchdown. It became 15-15.

Corsair coverage was working well to bat down passes, and Pasadena had to punt, but SMC was cited for roughing the kicker, another turning point to the game.

On one play, the Corsair D-line broke through and chased down the quarterback, who maybe thought he was Michael Vick running and spinning to avoid getting sacked. His antics led to him getting tackled even deeper behind the line of scrimmage, and they had to punt again.

Then came a strange call.

The 6'5" wide receiver Kane French caught a long pass on a trick play and fell to the ground with ball. After the dogpile was sorted out, he still had the ball. But the referees decided that possession belonged to Pasadena to the mystification of Santa Monica coaches and players.

It was another turning point.

Pasadena drove the ball to the touchdown.

After kickoff, SMC's Josiah Neos caught a ball and ran down the line for almost a touchdown. His teammate finished the job to bring the score to 22-22.

In the remaining moments of the first half, Pasadena scored so both teams went into the break at 22-29.

Last week, SMC shut down their opponents' scoring in the second half. This week, they were shut down.

In the second half, quarterback Sam Vaulton got sacked three times and threw and interception. Meanwhile, the Lancers scored twice. Santa Monica did a good job covering receivers but had trouble stopping the running game.

"We have a really good group. It's fun group of players," Coach Kelly said. "They work hard. They work for each other. They don't come out here blaming each other for things. But we had some guys miss practice this week for various reasons, and we didn't get a full practice until Thursday. We've got to go out and correct those mistakes and give ourselves a chance against a good Orange Coast team next week."

Read about SMC's game against Compton Sept. 11.