Vintage prevails in nail-biter against Napa to secure second straight VVAL title
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When Napa and Vintage meet, anything can happen. That means upsets are always possible.
But in Big Game XLVIII (48), Vintage beat their crosstown rivals, 26-20, to win their second straight Vine Valley Athletic League title.
“It feels great,” Vintage junior quarterback Jacob Aaron said of winning back-to-back VVAL champions. “It’s our one goal every single year and it’s great to accomplish that with the team.”
“I think we started off the game tentative,” Napa coach Richie Wessman explained. “We weren’t our normal confidence self and it took us about two and a half quarters to become that. Once we did that we start playing some really good football but at that point, it was too little too late.”
However, it sure didn’t come easy. With only 23.1 left in the game, the Crushers (9-1 overall, 6-0 VVAL) took the lead when Jacob Aaron was able to get to the end zone.
”We didn’t panic with two minutes to go,” Vintage coach Dylan Leach said. “We ran our offense. We didn’t get out of sync. We didn’t try to drop back and do a bunch of crazy things. I think that that that helped out but a great game played all around, so I don’t know how much difference there was.”
For a while, it seemed that the Grizzlies (7-3, 4-2 VVAL) were going to pull a massive upset after Napa quarterback Isiah Newton found the end zone from six yards with 2:17 left in the game. The score gave Napa a 20-19 lead.
“It felt good,” Newton said of his big score late in the contest. “But you know, two minutes is a lot of time in a football game. So, you just gotta depend on the defense and Vintage just did what they had to do to win the game. They wanted it.”
“He’s a fantastic young man,” Wessman said of Newton. “He’s done a great job of leading this football team and you can count on him to make big-time football plays for us.”
Newton rushed for 69 yards on 16 carries.
The first score of the game came when Mauricio Castro scored from 31 yards out with 4:31 left in the first quarter.
The Crushers went up by two scores when Aaron kept the ball and took it in from 83 yards away to put his team up 12-0. Aaron ended the night with 97 yards rushing on 8 carries while completing two of his eight passes for 30 yards. He also won the Great American Rivalry game MVP award.
“I mean, he’s gritty, he plays tough,” Leach said of his quarterback. “He’s a hard-nosed kid. He plays both ways the whole time, plays on special teams and never comes off the field.”
Napa got their first score of the game when Benito Saldivar found the end zone from six yards out with 7:48 left in the first half.
With 2:02 left in the first half, Aaron connected with Sam Neal for a 21-yard touchdown to put Vintage up by two scores again.
The only other score in the second half came when Newton found the end zone on a six-yard rush with 58.3 left in the third quarter.
Both teams will now have a bye week next week before they find out their CIF North Coast Section playoff fates on November 10th. There is a chance that the two schools could meet up again in the playoffs.
Napa now leads the all-time series 28-18-2, with Vintage winning the last three.
