Vintage opens up offense, led by passing attack to roll past Bethel to third straight win
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When the offense can slice the defense up like a hot knife through butter, it is fun to watch. But why are we playing with our food? The answer is that we’re all little kids at heart.
In Friday’s non-league game at Memorial Stadium, Vintage was able to do whatever they wanted as they rolled past Bethel-Vallejo, 44-14. This is also their third straight win.
Following that play, Vintage (3-1) was finally able to finish a drive to all but take the momentum in the game. This drive was capped off when Blake Porter found the end zone on a 1-yard run. He would later end the first half with another scoring run from 10 yards out when there were just 31 ticks left till the break. Porter carried the rock 5 times for 14 yards with a pair of touchdowns on the ground.
The game was close through a quarter and then the offense got a jump-start midway through the second quarter when Kayen West’s 59-yard kick return brought the ball to the other side of the field.
“That was a great return,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach said of the key momentum swing that West provided. “Just middle reg and ran it well, hit the wedge and ran hard. That was a good catalyst for what we had going on.”
The momentum only stayed when Riley Marek jumped a rout of a screenplay on the outside and took it to the house for a 15-yard pick-six with 8:17 to go in the first half.
Vintage kept their foot on the gas a few minutes later when Mason Howell took the ball down the sideline and into the end zone for a long 50-yard score with 7:22 remaining in the second quarter.
To begin the game, Porter found Ruben Sanchez for a 4-yard score with 2:44 left in the first quarter. In the game, Sanchez had 4 catches for 36 yards with one score.
“He’s just everything to us,” Leach explained to the team the importance of Sanchez. “He’s a leader. He works his butt off. He just does everything right. Like I said last week, I cannot say enough about the kid. Absolutely love his integrity, his character, and what he puts forth for our program. He’s exactly who I want in my program.”
The Crushers’ final score of the game came when Porter found Travis Larsen for a 12-yard scoring connection with 6:11 left in the third quarter. It was also another good game for Porter who showed off his arm in the contest by completing 10 of 16 passes for 177 yards and a pair of scores.
“In practice, I trust them,” Porter said of his solid group of receivers. “Then when it comes to the game, I trust them even more. I just know that they can back me up and I just want to thank my big guys out in front of me that are protecting me and keeping me safe, so I have the time to hit my receivers so they can make some plays.”
Part of the reason they were able to get the signal caller to be so efficient in the game was the use of RPOs which puts the offense in Porter’s hands.
“I mean, it’s good,” Leach said of his team executing the RPOs with success. “We ran them a lot last year, toward the end of the season, and I just think that we’ve been getting better and better, and I think Blake’s getting better and better with his reads, and the more people have to adjust their defense to what we do is a good thing for us.”
Bethel (0-4) got its first score of the game with 10:03 left in the second quarter when quarterback Kylan McNeal took a sneak straight up the middle and into the end zone to make it an 8-6 game.
The Jaguars then scored again with 7:51 left to play when McNeal found Melvin Miller for a long 88-yard score.
With the win, Vintage will now head into their bye week. During that week, they will get themselves ready for arguably the oddest non-league game in the history of our town as they will next host Napa High in Big Game LIII (53) on October 4th. It will be the first non-league meeting in series history. Napa leads the all-time series 29-21-2. However, Vintage has won the last 7 meetings.
Both schools will be selling tickets to the game. The winner of the annual car raffle will be announced during halftime as well.
