Vintage jumps out to big lead early as Sabbagha has breakout game to beat Petaluma, finish season on three-game winning streak
By Kyle Foster
Follow on X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When you’re a team not good at playing from behind, a fast start isn’t just nice, it’s a necessity. When both teams don’t like to pass the ball, it makes it even more of a race to seize control.
On Friday night at Napa Memorial Stadium, this is exactly what Vintage did as they beat Petaluma, 42-21, in the last game of the regular season.
Vintage (5-5 overall, 4-2 Vine Valley Athletic League) jumped out to a 21-0 lead, which was something that made it to where they could control the ball the whole game.
“It was great,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach said of jumping out to a quick three-score lead. “We’ve been taking the ball if we win the toss the last like three or four games just so we can get that first drive in and we feel like if we have a script that we can execute and get down there and make the drive that we put them behind. We don’t want to be behind. We’re not good at playing from behind. We want to be ahead and that’s the point of those.”
However, it also helped that Si Sabbagha had a big game on both sides of the ball in this one. On offense, he had four catches on five targets for 91 yards. This was his breakout as a wide receiver after beginning the season as the quarterback. One of those catches came on an amazing 26-yarder from Blake Porter that moved the ball down to the Petaluma 2-yard line. Just two plays later, Jefferey Page scored on a 1-yard run.
“It was definitely a switch,” Sabbagha explained of the move to wide receiver. “I had never played the position. It was all new to me. I’ve just got to thank my coaches. Coach Merrick Barnett and Coach Leach for trusting me and giving me an opportunity to get back on the field, giving me an opportunity. They’ve helped me out so much learning it.”
In the first half, Sabbagha also made a difference on the defensive side of the ball as well. After Vintage scored on the opening drive of the game on a Treven Cullinane 12-yard run to give the Crushers a 7-0 lead, Sabbagha made a leaping interception in the end zone for a touchback to turn away Petaluma in the red zone.
“We knew what we had,” Leach said of Sabbagha’s athleticism. “We knew the athleticism we had. “We felt like he was a little out of position at quarterback. We felt like we had a great athlete playing quarterback but not a quarterback playing quarterback and we felt like he was a great running back, a great receiver a great safety.
“I mean the interception that he made that play was a SportsCenter highlight and then go back to the catch over the guy’s shoulder, that’s a top 10 type of play,” Leach continued. “So what amazing play he had.”
With 6:02 left to play, Cullinane scored on an 8-yard run to give Vintage a 42-14 lead and put the game away. Cullinane ended the night with 38 yards on 5 carries.
Following the pick by Sabbagha, Page scored on a long 77-yard run to make it 14-0 with 3:57 left in the first. Page carried the ball 15 times for 154 yards in the game.
One of the biggest issues for Vintage this season has been hanging onto the football and winning the turnover battle. In the contest, they forced three turnovers and scored on all of them.
“It’s always good and we’ve been working really hard on ball control and just the importance of it and then drilling it and then executing it,” Leach said of winning the turnover battle. “So it’s something that Coach Rapacon takes very seriously, and I think he didn’t like the fact that we weren’t winning the turnover battles and he’s put a lot of time into that situation here in the last few weeks.”
Following the kickoff, Vintage batted the ball at the line of scrimmage for another interception. On the next play, Bailey Huss raced through a wide-open hole to give the Crushers a fast 21-0 lead with 3:44 left in the first.
Vintage finished the night with 338 yards rushing. They averaged over 10 yards a carry, a credit to the offensive line of Colby Jensen, Lorenzo Webb, Aiden Riddleberger, Matthew Stephenson, and Jay Ruiz opened up holes all night long.
Petaluma (6-4, 4-2 VVAL) cut the lead to 21-7 when Ryan Landry found Asher Levy for an 8-yard touchdown with 7:34 to go in the first half.
Ed Bernich again cut the lead to 14 when he scored on an 11-yard run with 7:37 left in the third. In garbage time, Brody Stevens scored on a 9-yard run with just 2:02 left to play.
To end the season, the Crushers have now won three straight, a sign that they are peaking after an up-and-down regular season.
“We had a new energy going into practice and renewed energy,” Sabbagha said of the winning streak to end the regular season. “It really helped us this week coming into the game. I felt like that energy at Big Game translated over to this week.”
They will take the winning streak into the CIF North Coast Section Division 2 playoffs next week. The brackets should be available sometime Sunday. You can view the brackets when they’re released here.
In other VVAL games on Friday night, American Canyon beat Justin-Siena 45-0 and Casa Grande beat Sonoma Valley 41-14.
Before the game, Vintage honored their seniors before their final home game as well.
