Belmont Shore is still in first place in the Southern California DI league, and the Long beach club is still undefeated, but it was a very close-run thing.

Shore needed a late try from Sinipati Uiagalelei to overhaul Las Vegas in Nevada 12-9 and stay unbeaten.

“We didn’t play very well,” said Belmont Shore Head Coach Ray Egan. “We made far too many errors, and we missed three penalties early, that if we’d kicked them, would have put us up 9-0 and perhaps changed things. But against a good side like Las Vegas, we turned the ball over too much.”

Vegas punished those turnovers, but not quite with the tries they would ultimately need. Three forays into the Shore 22 netted three penalties and a 9-0 Las Vegas lead at halftime.

But Shore settled down and took a little better care of the ball in the second half.

“We wanted quick ball, and Vegas did a very good job of slowing our ball down,” said Egan. “Once we got the ball out to Pati, we were able to do some things.”

With centers Ed Pitts and Peter Sio working well together, and scrumhalf Andrew Mase, along with No. 8 Peter Dahl, leading the way, Shore got on track, somewhat. They scored a try to make it 9-7, and then Uiagalelei’s run down the right wing put his side ahead.

“In the end I think we were lucky,” said Egan. “Vegas might feel a bit hard-done by that they lost. We did just enough I guess.”

For the first time ever, Belmont Shore took three squads to Las Vegas, a 1sts, 2nds, and open side, and fulfilled three fixtures. It was, said Egan, “a great day from a club standpoint.”

Meanwhile elsewhere in SoCal, there was plenty of scoring. OMBAC ran out to a massive 49-0 lead over Los Angeles at halftime. Things slowed down after that, in part after referee Mark Kottke suffered an unfortunate injury. OMBAC ended up winning 60-0.

Santa Monica endured a tussle with Back Bay in the first half, as the two teams changed ends with Santa Monica up 24-17. However, in the second half the Dolphins exploded for 29 unanswered points to win 53-17. Recent UCLA grad Dave Martini was the man of the match as the flanker put in a massive effort with the ball and on defense.

Captain Ken Aseme scored three tries for Santa Monica.

“We’ve been focusing on our defensive game the last few weeks and it came together today,” said Santa Monica Coach Doug Bratcher.

So halfway through the season, Belmont Shore leads but doesn’t have a lot of room for error as OMBAC keeps racking up the bonus points. Las Vegas drops to 1-3-1, but is not out of it.