Vintage looks to back up success in spring with deep playoff run
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Despite the fact that last spring’s football season was all of six games, it went about as well as it could for the Vintage football team.
But now, as they get ready to start a full ten-game season, many new faces will need to step up to lead the way.
Despite losing a lot of talented players to graduation, they have a plethora of guys who got lots of experience last season. The returners are Dylan Smith, Preston Gullum, Louie Canepa, Tytan Bradley, Justin Ray, Bryce Powers, Diego Davis, Noah Tanpoco, Brodie Jacque, Reid Woolworth, Nate Materne, Mo Shcaumkel, Mark Crocker, and Aaron Ballines.
Another luxury is that all of their juniors saw a ton of game action in the spring due to the lopsided scores.
“That’s the one good part of having a spring season is that a lot of these kids are only a few months (removed) from that,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach explained of how the younger varsity players were able to gain valuable experience. “We have good film and we have a good evaluation from these even practice in a sense where say a sophomore practiced with us all this year and maybe only got time in the third or fourth quarter of games, we still have a lot of film on them from competing in practice.”
After all, the Crushers will be going for their 4th straight Vine Valley Athletic League title. Last spring, they were perfect by finishing with a 6-0 record in the VVAL.
They too have also had to deal with the quick turnaround from the spring to fall seasons.
“I think it’s probably been more difficult than a normal year just because you don’t have your time periods down when it comes to (the) periodization of lifting. So you’ve had to play with that,” Leach said. “I know coach Yepson’s worked really hard at that aspect. It was just a mire difficult time. Plus, with people starting to open up I think a lot of families and rightfully so were trying to take advantage of that. We just had probably more absences than normal throughout the summer. But when the kids are here, they obviously work their tails off and we appreciate the effort they give.”
“It feels good,” Smith added. “It just feels like a year-round football season. It never really stops, so I feel like we’re ready. Getting ready at least.”
Vintage has had a busy summer. They have been participating in local 7-on-7 matchups while also going to a few 7-on-7 tournaments.
“It was cool to have seven on,” Bradley explained. “I mean we played in a few tournaments and had a few games. So it’s good to get out there and just be competitive again.”
“I loved it,” Vintage junior Owen Tretheway said. “It was nice to go watch and support our skill players and watching them ball out in seven-on.”
The Crushers have plenty of reason to look forward to home games this season as well. Since the fall of 2019, Memorial Stadium can host a capacity crowd at games for the first time. With that, comes student rooters who add more energy to the game.
A brutally tough non-league schedule awaits
By being the defending league champion, the Crushers were the only team to play everyone in the league. With that being said, they had a daunting non-league schedule ready last season that they didn’t get to play.
But now, they get to face that challenge.
“I think we’re excited,” Gullum said of the non-league gauntlet. “That’s pretty much all we can say is, we want that we want the hard work. We don’t want to just roll everybody. We want the hard schedule.”
They’ll begin the season on August 27th when they head to Danville for a top-notch matchup with San Ramon Valley. The two teams have history. In the fall of 2018, the two teams met in the CIF North Coast Section Division 2 semifinals. In that game, San Ramon Valley won 14-3.
The schedule doesn’t get any easier from there. In their home-opener on September 3rd, they’ll face a solid El Cerrito program. The two teams met back in the fall of 2019. Vintage came away with a 29-9 victory.
After that, it will be one of the top matchups in the North Bay when the Crushers visit Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa on September 10th. The matchup nearly happened in the spring, which is why this matchup will be nice to see.
Their final non-league game will be against Oakland High on September 17th.
“Not only are we playing great programs throughout our non-league, but it’s a great indicator of are do we have that opportunity to make a playoff run and then not just make the playoff run, but how far are we going to go within that playoff run,” Leach said of the importance of the non-league slate. “Here’s the thing with our non-league schedule, we’re gonna know. I will know after week four exactly where we stand in the effort and the changes or anything that we need to make.”
League schedule should be more challenging
It was no secret that the Crushers cruised to the league title last season. However, things could change this year with a more normal year. This season, the Crushers will look to extend their VVAL unbeaten streak to 24 games.
The Crushers will open up VVAL play on September 24th when they travel to Petaluma to face Casa Grande. The game in Petaluma will be the last time the Crushers leave Napa for a road game.
Vintage will return home the next week to host Petaluma on October 1st. After that, they’ll host American Canyon on October 8th.
They’ll then have their first in-town road game on October 15th when they visit Justin-Siena.
The final home game of the season will be against Sonoma Valley on October 22nd.
Vintage will end the season when they meet Napa in Big Game L (50) on October 29th. In a rarity, the Crushers will be the road team for the second year in a row because the league schedule is being repeated. Normally, Vintage is the home team in even-numbered Big Games. Currently, Vintage has a four-game win streak going and won in the spring 35-7.
This will also be the first time in the history of Big Game that there will be two in the same calendar year.
The Crushers bye week will be the last week of the regular season. This means they’ll play ten consecutive games before a bye week that comes before the playoffs.
New playoff division awaits Crushers
The CIF North Coast Section playoffs and CIF State playoffs are set to return this year. They have been bumped up to the toughest division in the CIF North Coast section for football – the Division 1 bracket.
“It will be a challenge, but it’s definitely better than what we’ve been playing,” Canepa said. “I feel like this goes for all of us, we prefer to have those teams than the teams we’ve been playing.”
They were bumped up due to the CIF North Coast Section’s competitive equity formula. They had made the section semifinals in back-to-back seasons before there were no playoffs in the spring. However, they are the smallest school in the CIF North Coast Section Division 1 field.
“It’ll be just like the team two years ago,” Davis said of the move the Division one. “Might be a lower seed, but they still beat the number one seed back then.”
The division is filled with some of the best teams in the state like De La Salle-Concord, Pittsburg, Clayton Valley-Concord, Liberty-Brentwood, Freedom-Oakley, Heritage, Monte Vista-Danville, James Logan-Union City, and Antioch.
“Here’s the deal with that. I can only control what I can control,” Leach said of the bump to the toughest playoff division in the CIF North Coast Section. “I know that population-wise, we should not be in division one. We should be in division three.”
Tweaks to the coaching staff
As is the case in every season, coaching staffs go through changes. This season is no different.
Last season, most of the new coaches got acquainted with the program. That means there are very few changes going on this year. The lone tweak is that Leach will coach the linebackers. It’s a role he’s familiar with too.
“I think going back to coaching a position is the normal thing for me,” Leach explained. “I got my roots in the back seven. I was starting here as a defensive coordinator at Vintage in 2000. So my roots are on the defensive side of the ball and especially in the back seven. It’s a great chance for me because I get to get close with a group.”
Freshmen football returns after a year break
While other teams in the league won’t have the key building block that is freshmen football, it returns after a year’s break at Vintage.
“If you look around and you look at our schedule at the freshman level, you look at who’s offering games, it doesn’t surprise me at all it’s the top of the top in the section that are offering freshmen games,” Leach said of the importance of having freshman football back. “To me, it’s the best having three teams to equal one program. I love having a freshman staff and a JV staff that I can trust and know what they’re doing and that’ll get after it. So we’re really excited about having three levels back.”
