It is early enough in Jon Mack's tenure as Ventura College football coach that he is quite comfortable with modest goals.

"I was happy that we had 11 guys on the field, and they lined up correctly most of the time," Mack said of Saturday's scrimmage at Cal Lutheran, an event matching two teams in the early stages of their first seasons under new head coaches.

His CLU counterpart, Ben McEnroe, often couldn't even take consolation in something as simple as that. The Kingsmen offense was penalized on five of its first nine attempts to run a play, indicating just how many rough edges there are to be polished in the next two weeks.

"We've got to cancel our tee times (today)," said McEnroe. "We got everything out of it we need to. To be able to put in a competitive situation was a great test for us."

Ventura was wrapping up its second week of training camp, CLU its first, and in both cases, it showed. While the Pirate offense was clearly a bit more polished than CLU's, both defenses predictably appeared to be ahead of the offenses.

This is not only to be expected, but is one of the points of the whole exercise.

"Finally you get to see some film versus an opponent, and evaluate," said Mack. "There's no score being kept — it's a scrimmage for a reason; there's a lot of things to work on."

Unofficially, then, Ventura scored a 9-0 decision, in a scrimmage which featured a half of full-fledged football — differing only from a regulation game in rules limiting quarterback contact and the team's practice uniforms — followed by controlled scrimmaging in which the teams alternated 10-play offensive possessions.

"It's about what you need to work on, and evaluating personnel," said Mack. "Figuring out who really are your players."

The scoring came in the two game-like quarters, on a 22-yard pass from quarterback Junior Riley (Hueneme High) to receiver Jordan Cameron (Newbury Park), and a 33-yard field goal by Kris Reveles.

Cameron was the day's offensive standout (seven catches for 83 yards), working with both Riley (8 for 17, 138 yards) and Donovan Estes (6 for 8, 62 yards), who alternated series at quarterback.

"Good to get the rust off," said Cameron. "It was fun.

"Everybody's coming from different areas, trying to learn an offense, but we're getting used to it."

The Pirates are indeed from all over, and are almost entirely newcomers. Ventura's preseason roster lists just 11 sophomores and 78 freshmen, representing players from 23 California high schools and eight other states. Pulling this disparate group into a cohesive unit, in time for this week's opener with L.A. Harbor, is Mack's first challenge.

McEnroe has a much larger group of returnees — more than 40 — but still has plenty of newcomers to pull together and positions to fill. Saturday's action underlined how much remains to be done before the Sept. 8 opener with Pacific Lutheran.

"We're obviously very frustrated with the penalties, especially in the first half on the offensive side," said McEnroe. "I was disappointed with the execution of the punt team" — bad-snap issues helped set Ventura up at the CLU 23 and 31 for its two scoring drives — "and I think our offensive execution was not great. With the penalties, we put ourselves in a lot of long-yardage situations, and we don't have that many long-yardage plays."

The bright spot in the CLU offense was running back Louis Montano, who had nine carries for 37 yards, including runs of 14 and 17 yards that accounted for two of CLU's three longest offensive gains in the game-like portion of the scrimmage.

"All in all, I was pleased with the effort, and that's crucial," said McEnroe. "We can fix everything we messed up. I'm not concerned about that. We've got another week before we (play) intra-squad, and I expect us to be a lot better team next Saturday."