Seaside-Monterey football

Friday's game
Seaside (1-1) vs. Monterey (1-1) at MPC, 7:30 p.m.
 Hard to believe after 52 meetings, the Battle of the Bay nearly came to a halt after the teams were split into different leagues.
 Non-league schedules, however, were re-worked in an effort to keep a tradition more than a half century old alive.
 Monterey has won four of the last five meetings to take a 27-24-1 series lead, including last year's 28-6 decision.
 What's odd this year is 48 previous battles had been the final game of the regular season. Playing the game in Week 3 has cooled some of the hype.
  Yet, it's still not a regular game.
 Both teams are coming in with a little momentum after the Toreadores beat Soquel and Seaside ran over Monta Vista of Cupertino.
 Both wins came at home. Even though it's Monterey's home game, this is on a neutral site.
 The fast synthetic MPC surface could turn this into a track meet between the Toreadores Akili Jones and Seaside's Keishawn Robinson.
 Jones, a two-time 1,000 yard tailback, chalked up a career high 318 yards last week while Robinson became the first Seaside running back to top 100 yards in five years with 186 rushing yards.
 Monterey's defense is work in progress, having given up 76 points in two games. Seaside's ground game showed life for the first time in five years with Johnson rushing for three touchdowns.