Sluggish start dooms Vintage in season opening loss to San Ramon Valley
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (shamboozled.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
A slow start is a bad thing if you’re looking to win a football game. Unfortunately, this is what doomed the Vintage football team on Friday night when they lost 41-7 to San Ramon valley of Danville in the opener.
“All credit to them, they were really good,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach said. “ I mean, they were really good, but we were really bad. We’ve got to fix ourselves and it starts with me. Like I just told the team, ‘we’re gonna look in the mirror and fix ourselves.’ I felt like they were coming out and played a fast, tough game, and we were slow and not tough. That’s a bad combination.”
It also didn’t help that San Ramon Valley seized momentum from the opening kickoff. On the opening kickoff, Nick Rivera took it back to the house for a 97-yard touchdown return, which is never a way to begin a game.
Another reason all you can do is admire is the fact that San Ramon Valley junior quarterback Luke Baker was insane when it came to dishing the ball. After all, he ended the night by completing 16 of 18 passes for 263 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
The Wolves (1-0) jumped out to a two-score lead at the 5:29 mark in the first quarter when Baker found Pau Mendoza for a 25-yard touchdown pass. Baker’s other touchdown came when found Gavin Jones for a 35-yard connection with just 1:20 left in the first half.
Vintage (0-1) got on the board with 3:20 left in the first when Dylan McMann plunged into the end zone from a yard out. McMann led the Crushers’ duel running back group with 54 yards on 6 carries.
“Yeah, I felt like they weren’t able to stop us on the run for a while there,” Leach explained of the lone score of the night. “But then we just shot ourselves in the foot with some penalties and it is what it is.”
All night long the Crushers’ offense was discombobulated, as they were forced to burn timeouts the whole night to combat issues getting packages put together.
However, Leach thinks his team will come back from this as they prepare to visit Antioch next Friday night.
“You turn the page,” the coach said “What are we going to do sit here and worry about what just happened? We’re going to look at the mirror and get better it’s all we can do.”
San Ramon Valley kicker Austin Shelton also put on a show with a pair of long-range field goals in the third quarter. His first kick went right down the middle from 37 yards out at the 9:11 mark. With 3:47 left, he also converted this time from 40 yards out.
Rivera had the final score of the game when he scampered into the end zone from 16 yards out with 1:05 left in the third quarter.
