Vintage on verge of league title after pounding of Sonoma Valley
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Vintage football team showed why they’re the favorites to win the Vine Valley Athletic League title on Friday night with their 56-6 pounding of Sonoma Valley.
From the start of the game the Crushers (7-2, 5-0 VVAL) established their dominance as they scored two touchdowns on their first three plays from scrimmage. The highlight play of the first quarter was when Troy Ghisletta connected with Billy Birdsall for a 39-yard touchdown pass. Birdsall also had one more touchdown reception on the night, while Ghisletta had a one-yard touchdown rush to go along with his snazzy passing one.
The play, otherwise known as the “Philly Special”, was the play where the quarterback takes the snap and hands it to the running back who flips the ball to a wide receiver running back the other way before passing the ball to a wide open receiver on the edge.
“Well we ran it against Petaluma and it worked,” Vintage coach Dylan Leach explained of the fun play call. “We decided to run it in the middle of the field and we actually ran a post-corner out of it instead of the regular dig like you would normally run in it so we got the touchdown out it, but yeah that’s just something that we like to run and it’s a great play.”
Vintage quarterback Jacob Aaron had by far his best game of the season as he ended the night completing 9 of his 11 passes for 141 yards and three touchdowns.
“It’s cool. I don’t really care about stats, but I just look at the scoreboard and I see 56-6 and that’s a pretty good game for us,” Aaron said of his efficient night passing the ball.
Another thing that was impressive about Aarons brief evening was that he was calling the offensive plays.
“The kids got moxie and he just wants to compete,” Leach said of Aaron calling the offensive plays. “He’s a student of the game and I appreciate the work that he puts in, and it kind of rivals me and not many people do on that case, so I love that and I love to sit and chat with him about what we can do and I love for him to kind of grow during this type of situation and that’s what he did tonight.”
“Yeah so Petaluma week I also called a few plays actually and we had a good little run there,” Aaron explained of taking the reins of the play calling. “It’s all chemistry man. All receivers and quarterback combos and everything it’s all chemistry, and receivers want certain routes and things like that and I know what players want these kinds of routes and everything, so I just kinda mixed it all in together and yeah it worked out pretty well.”
Coming into this game the Dragons (3-7, 2-4 VVAL) defense had performed well against spread offense teams like Napa and Justin-Siena, so Leach took that as a challenge.
“Well they’ve dominated every spread team they’ve played, so I take that as a challenge right,” he explained of the Dragon defense. “We’ve got to get practice against teams. They shut out Justin, they basically shut out Napa, and those are two spread teams, so we wanted to come out and test our spread against a team that plays it pretty well.”
The Crusher defense also flexed their muscles on the evening as they forced four Sonoma Valley turnovers. One of the turnovers was a 39-yard pick six by Jacob Bittner. Vintage forced two fumbles and two interceptions on the night.
The Dragons lone score came with 5:48 left in the game when Andrew Beatty had a 94-yard kickoff return, but later Sonoma missed the PAT.
For Sonoma Valley their regular season is over, but they have already clinched a berth in the CIF North Coast Section division four playoffs. As for Vintage, Big Game XLVII (47) against rival Napa High is next Friday at 7 p.m. If Vintage wins they’ll secure their first league title since 2005.
Vintage JV 48 Sonoma Valley 8
It was yet another display of dominance by the Vintage JV football team on Friday.
Ian Avalos and Edgar Navarro were the star performers on the night for Vintage (9-0, 5-0 VVAL). Reid McCaffrey also caught a touchdown pass from Bill Chaidez.
Next week at 4:45 Vintage will meet rival Napa for Little Big Game.
