Sonoma Valley pulls away in second half, as Giarritta has a huge night to beat Napa
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Follow on X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When a game is close, you have to finish the job by hanging in there for four grueling quarters.
In Friday night’s Vine Valley Athletic League contest at Napa Memorial Stadium, Sonoma Valley was able to do this to outlast Napa, 50-26, to get their first league win.
“Our goal is just probably to play four quarters of football at this point,” Napa High lead assistant and offensive coordinator Chris Yepson explained. “Two quarters on the back end of the Casa game. I felt like we played a great first half of this football game other than just the really bad penalties in the first half. So we just need to string together four quarters of football. That’s the most important thing right now.”
On the other hand, it also didn’t help that the Dragons had a matchup nightmare in Hudson Giaritta who made it a long night as they were always looking for ways to contain him.
Normally that player stands out as well. In Friday night’s Vine Valley Athletic League contest at Memorial Stadium, the standout on the field was Hudson Giaritta as he was all over the field to lead the Dragons past Napa High, 50-26.
The highlight for Giarritta came with 8:57 left in the first half when he took the kickoff back 90 yards to give the Dragons a 15-6 lead.
He also added a pair of touchdown receptions from 10 and 21 yards out. He ended the night with 6 receptions for 93 yards as well.
“He’s a very good football player,” Yepson said of Giarritta. “He’s a very sold corner. A big kid that can lay some hits. It’s hard to attack the edge when you have a very solid coroner who can set the edge. So he’s a really good football player and hats off to a great coaching staff on the other side he got on the football any which way they could. We just had a lot of trouble tackling in space or inside the tackles today. It’s a tough night to be a Grizzly.”
Another reason why Sonoma Valley (3-4 overall, 1-2 VVAL) was able to get the big plays in the second half was the fact that Napa had a hard time tackling. Lately, they’ve also had a hard time putting together four good quarters of football as well.
“I thought we had a great halftime gameplan to come out and make some adjustments offensively,” Yepson said. “I just feel like today, we couldn’t get out of our own way. Maybe I put a lot of this on us as a coaching staff. These kids, they were not prepared enough and that’s on myself and coach Harris, and everyone else involved in coaching at Napa High. We had a lot of mental mistakes, and that comes from them not being prepared, which means that we need to do better Monday through Thursday getting ready. So that way these kids are confident on the football field.”
The Dragons spread out the scoring the rest of the way. After all, Trent Ohman threw four touchdowns in the game with the other two going to Austin Hughes from 21 and 8 yards away. Ohman also completed 15 of 26 passes for 168 yards in the game. As for Hughes, he caught 5 passes for 61 yards to finish as the Dragons’ second-best receiver in the game.
On the ground, Sonoma Valley was able to get two more scores despite not getting too much yardage. Cayden Waldrop rushed 5 times for 24 yards, which included a score from 2 yards away to put Sonoma Valley up 43-20 with 9:28 left in the game. Meanwhile, Payden Ihrig logged 4 carries for 22 yards and a 16-yard scoring scamper as the final score of the game with 2:54 left to play. Lee Scott added 44 yards on 8 rushes.
However, this was a game for a half. The Grizzlies (4-3, 0-3 VVAL) found themselves down 15-14 at the break. They were able to do this behind a pair of scoring runs by Diego Montanez that were from 9 and 2 yards out. In the game, Montanez was a duel threat as he rushed for 53 yards while ale throwing for 308 yards and completing 17 of 26 passes with an interception.
“I think our offensive line pass protection was phenomenal,” Yepson pointed out. “He had a lot of time back there to try to find the open guys, which he did a lot of the time. He got to check downs he got to his third check there on a few different plays, which was great. I’d love to see him kind of pull and run sometimes and stop always looking for the for the guy downfield but it’s to high school quarterback, he’s doing the best he can and you know, he’s got to go with what his gut instinct is never gonna fault the kid for doing what he thinks is best in the heat of the moment.”
The main beneficiary of the big game by Montanez was Yovanni Palma. He reeled in 6 catches for a game-high 166 yards that included a long 80-yard score with 9:06 left in the game that cut the Sonoma Valley lead to 43-26. He also got a one-yard score on the ground with 4.2 left in the third quarter.
“Yovanni has the best hands on the football team by far one and then two, he’s just one of the smartest players who I’ve ever coached in my entire life and I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Yepson said of Palma and his importance. “I mean, he’s a coach on the field. He’s an amazing kid as well as football player. He may be a better kid than football player. Yo Yo just commands a big presence in the middle. We’ve been lucky with Fish commanding a double team like he did tonight. It kind of let Yo Yo cook a little bit more than normal.”
After making it through the beginning part of the season undefeated, the Grizzlies have now dropped three straight games. The schedule doesn’t get much easier as the season winds down either for Napa as they will now visit American Canyon and Petaluma in back-to-back weeks before meeting Vintage in Big Game.
Those next two teams up for Napa met on Friday night where Petaluma beat American Canyon 53-26. In the other VVAL game, Casa Grande-Petaluma beat Justin-Siena 59-0.
