Vintage exacts revenge, rolls past Wood in season-opener
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
It’s always nice to get revenge. It’s also nice to get in the win column in your first game of the season.
The Vintage football team did both of those things in their 41-0 victory over Wood-Vacaville in their season opener.
“It feels great, you know, ran the ball as hard as I could to my seniors (class of 2019),” Vintage senior running back Mauricio Castro said. You know, this was to them, dedicated to them and we’re just going to move forward and just focus on the next game.”
“I told these guys going in this is an opportunity for them as a new year, new team,” Leach said. “I absolutely love seeing my guys down here from last year. But this is a new opportunity to create a new legacy.”
“Yeah, it was definitely nice,” Vintage junior quarterback Jacob Aaron said of getting revenge on Wood after last season’s 35-7 loss. “That was the worst loss of my life last year. So, it definitely felt good to come out here and put up a donut on the board.”
The scoring began right away for Vintage (1-0) when Pedja Zivkovic found the end zone from a yard out with 8:32 left in the first quarter.
The Crushers were able to get their passing game going when Bill Chaidez found Billy Birdsall for a 30-yard connection with 8:38 remaining in the second quarter.
Only 18 seconds later Vintage would strike again when Zivkovic returned fumble by Wood (0-1) quarterback Jance Magaoay from 17 yards out.
“Discipline and coaching,” Aaron said of the defense. “All of our guys played very discipline tonight. Our backers were flying free did a great job tonight was just disciplined and sticking to our job.”
The Crushers went into the halftime break up 28-0 after Castro found the end zone from ten yards out with only a minute and 25 seconds remaining in the half.
Vintage scored twice more in the third quarter when Castro again found the end zone, this time from 15 yards out at the 6:48 mark. The final score of the game came when Zivkovic found the end zone on a 20-yard scamper with 4:09 left in the quarter.
The Crushers’ top rusher on the night was Castro. He carried the ball eight times and had 77 yards with two touchdowns.
“You know, the linemen just fought through,” Castro added. “I’m proud of my linemen.”
Aaron echoed the statements of his teammate about the line play.
“I mean that’s kind of the story here we can run the ball pretty well,” he explained. “So that’s not really a surprise a line is doing a remarkable job of for how big they are and so much they can do it’s just unbelievable.”
Zivkovic carried the ball four times for 59 yards, to go along with a touchdown.
Vintage will be back in action next Friday night at 7 p.m. when they visit El Cerrito. Wood will host Clovis East next Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Vintage JV 48 Wood 12
In this case, the junior varsity game was a near carbon copy of the game it preceded.
The Crushers (1-0) led 41-6 before the half.
Both teams will be in action again next week. Vintage will visit El Cerrito a 4:45 p.m., while Wood will host Clovis East.
