Vintage takes down top-seeded Antioch in overtime thriller to move on in section playoffs
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
ANTIOCH-The Vintage football team pulled off one of their biggest wins in program history on Friday night with their 24-21 victory over top-seeded Antioch.
“We fight, we’re fighters,” Vintage coach Dylan Leach said afterwards. “This crew knows this is what we do. We knew going in what we were up against, and we got down 14-0 and I told the kids ‘we won’t change a thing, we’re not going to panic, I don’t panic, we’re not going to start running things we don’t run’. I actually reverted back to our power run game and just took it to them the second half.”
“You know it feels great,” Vintage senior DB/WR/RB/QB Michael Webber said of the huge victory. “I knew we could pull through. We’ve been saying all week that these guys may underestimate us, and we came out as underdogs.”
The first score of the game came with 3:58 left till half when Willem Kamthong connected with Gaudie Campbell for 34-yard touchdown.
The Panthers (7-4) began the second half in grand fashion when Devonyae McClay brought the kickoff back 85 yards.
In the fourth quarter Vintage (10-2) came to life. With 7:27 left in the game Viliami Schaumkel scored from five yards out to get the Crushers on the board. Later, with 5:26 left,and after an Antioch fumble, Schaumkel plunged into the end zone from two yards out to tie the game.
The game went to overtime after Antioch kicker Omar Curiel missed a game-winning field goal attempt.
In the overtime the Crushers score first to claim their first lead of the contest when Schaumkel again found the end zone – once again from two yards out. The game went to second overtime after Kamthong found Campbell for a 14-yard touchdown.
“Scoring three touchdowns on this team, Antioch the No. 1 seed, I’m just speechless because our line we had a few mistakes, but then towards crunch time they made it happen when we really needed it the most,” Schaumkel said of his three touchdown night.
Schaumkel ended the night with 89 yards on 19 carries.
In the first drive of the second OT Curiel once again missed a field goal, which gave the Crushers their opportunity to win the game. On a 4th-and-18 Vintage kicker Eddy Gonzalez squeaked a 35-yard field goal through the uprights to win the game.
“I was like ‘sqeak, c’mon get over’,” a enthusiastic Leach said of the game-winning kick. “Hey he made it, and like I said to the team right there (postgame huddle) a lot of times that’s all people see and people want to talk about that and I appreciate Eddy and what he did – but let’s be real this game was won in four quarters and overtimes – so he was just a small piece of the puzzle.”
“I was nervous, but I said ‘we’re not going to go home it’s going to go in and we’re going to go celebrate tonight’,” Gonzalez said of his crucial kick.
Before the game even kicked off Vintage had to deal with adversity, but as the game progressed they lost sophomore quarterback Jacob Aaron to what appeared to be a left shoulder injury. Troy Ghisletta, the backup quarterback, shined in place of Aaron on the night.
“Troy’s a baller. What a great job he did,” Leach explained of Ghisletta’s performance on the night. “Losing Jacob that’s hard to do right in the middle of the game, or beginning of the game. So losing him was a hard thing, but I give these guys a lot of reps Troy gets a lot of reps, Michael gets a lot of reps, so we feel like this was the next step.”
“It feels great, but I knew we had it in us,” Ghisletta said of taking over after the Aaron injury. “Especially, it feels awesome to beat such a good team like that.”
For Antioch the season is now over. Meanwhile, Vintage will take a trip to Danville next Saturday night at 7 p.m. to face the winner of the No. 4 San Ramon Valley vs No. 5 Monte Vista that will take place Monday night. The bracket can be viewed here.
