By Ed Piper
La Jolla's football season opener Fri., August 20 was receiver Mason Powers' breakout party.
Powers and his fellow receiving corpsmen, Ryan Weinberg and Austin Bale, combined for 16 receptions from quarterback Jackson Stratton, good for 291 yards and four touchdowns.
Powers, himself, grabbed seven passes totaling 99 yards. Within the first minute and a half of the game, La Jolla's offense quickly lining up on 3rd-and10, Stratton found Mason with a pass from 18 yards out for the Vikings' initial score. The time on the clock: 10:31.
LJHS went on to score five more times from scrimmage.
That occasion wasn't the "quick hands" man's first reception of the night. Earlier in the short drive beginning on their own 38-yard line, on a 2nd-and-15, Jackson connected with his senior classmate to the left for eight yards.
Mason, a senior, has waited a long time for this. On the freshman team three years ago, long before COVID entered our vocabulary, he combined with Stratton as "boy wonders" on that squad to put up big offensive numbers.
But the next year, 2019, the numbers didn't totally translate over for Powers in the move up to varsity, despite the desire, despite the ambition, despite all his dedicated practice efforts.
Then, in Fall 2020, COVID threw a wet blanket over everybody's ambitions, and a shortened, five-game season this Spring had to take the place of a cancelled full schedule. La Jolla's football team, under Coach Tyler Roach, continued its climb after the Eastern League title, the CIF title, and the Southern California regional title of 2019.
No one blamed Powers, in the midst of the Max Smith-led juggernaut that Viking football had become. But the numbers weren't quite there.
So the 2021 Fall opener against crosstown rival Bishop's, a former "machine" with Ty Buchner at quarterback reduced to a whimper, meant that much more.
And Powers had to be celebrating Friday night, as he was targeted frequently in the mix of quick hands that Stratton was throwing to against the Knights. And he made good on his opportunities.
Asked the week before, prior to the scrimmage against Valhalla in an event held at El Capitan High, who the "good hands" people were on the team, Defensive Coordinator Stephen Dixon immediately named Mason. "And I'm not even involved with the offense," Dixon said. The platoon Powers shined in during the season opener.
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