Tamalpais scores early and often to beat Justin-Siena in Redwood Empire Valley opener

By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (shamboozled.com) 

kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaSportsNews @NapaKyle 

When you’re looking for the first win, teams will come in with something to prove. This is the case if it’s in league play and things haven’t gone as they wanted. 

In Friday’s game at Dodd Stadium, this is what Tamalpais-Mill Valley did as they beat Justin-Siena 54-6, in a Redwood Empire Conference Valley opener.

Tamalpais did this by showing off what they’ve been capable of on offense all year. They did this by running for 173 yards while passing for another 143. 

The Red Hawks (1-4, 1-0 REC-Valley) started the game out fast. Just a few moments into the game, Henry Tuttle found Streeter Holt for a 36-yard score. This score came with 9:33 left in the first quarter.  

Just a few minutes later, Tuttle found another open receiver in Timo Ural. This score came from 16 yards out with 7:03 to go in the first. 

The Red Hawks moved to a 21-0 lead as the first quarter ended when Tuttle found his third receiver for a score in Tyler Weisberg for the longest score of the night on a 54-yard connection. 

Tamalpais added another passing touchdown to begin the second when Cole Kramlich caught the final passing touchdown of the game from Tuttle on a 24-yard score. In the game, Tuttle completed 5 of 6 passes for 143 yards and the four scores through the air. 

As the game progressed, the Red Hawks began to showcase more of their running game, capitalizing on a big lead. They had three backs find the end zone in the contest. They also rushed for 173 yards in the game. Despite this, the Justin-Siena defense was able to make some plays in the running game, especially early in the game. 

“Honestly, we got to do a better job tackling,” Justin-Siena head coach Tyler Streblow said. “It’s just hard when we have such limited numbers to do it that much. We had to pull up a guy from JV to play corner. We’re playing a quarterback out at the other corner, just because of injuries and stuff like that. So, I think in the box, we’re doing a pretty good job. When it does spill to the outside, that’s where we’re really young and really inexperienced, and have guys who haven’t played a lot, so that will get better. But I do feel good about the up the middle stuff. On defense, I feel really good about our front seven, up the middle.”

All of these rushing scores by Tamalpais were scored on the outside part of the field, too. The first one of those came by Miles Kelsey on a 6-yard score with 6 minutes to go in the second quarter. Kelsey had 73 yards on 10 carries in the game. 

To end the first half and give the Hawks a 41-0 lead, Wyatt Leach scored on a long 45-yard score down the sideline. This came with 2:44 left in the second. Leach also scored on a 5-yard run out of the half with 8:45 left in the third. He carried the ball just 3 times for 80 yards.   

The last Tamalpais score came from Streeter Holt, who scored on a 20-yarder with 10:34 left in the game. 

Justin-Siena (0-4, 0-1 REC-Valley) scored its lone touchdown on a long 53-yard run by Bryden Landry. This came after working the triple option all game, and a hole finally opened up. Landy carried the ball 6 times for 52 yards in the game. 

“We’re trying to run the ball,” Streblow explained. “We’re trying to execute our offense. I think we just finally kind of relaxed a little bit, and we just played there at the end. So, as I’ve been telling them all year, they are capable of doing that. We’re capable of being a very good run team. We just quite haven’t got there yet.” 

But showcasing as the lead running back in the game was Augustine Heun, who finished the game with 61 yards on 16 carries. However, he also caught 4 passes for 36 yards and moved the chains in the game to keep drives going. 

Throughout this tough start to the season, there has been some growth for Justin-Siena. It’s just something that is hard, considering this is a very young and green group at the varsity level. 

“It’s tough right now, and we’ve talked about that, but it’s going back to day one, a lot of this stuff, and it’s reminding us as coaches to really dig in and go back to the fundamentals and really make sure we are explaining everything we’re doing,” Streblow said of working with a young team. “Last year, we had so many seniors I could just kind of say one word from the sideline and they would know what we were trying to accomplish. This year, we can’t do that. We’ve spent a lot of time going over film and kind of teaching the game of football, which, in a certain sense, I’ve enjoyed, because you’re going back and teaching people who don’t really understand the game. So it’s like you’re teaching it to someone new, and that’s kind of exciting, and see them when they start to get it and try to figure it out. So, I look forward to that, and for the rest of the year, I just want us to get better.” 

Justin-Siena will be back in action next Friday night at 7 pm when they visit Petaluma. This will be another Redwood Empire Valley game. 

In the other REC-Valley game, Casa Grande beat Napa 45-7. The Petaluma-Redwood game will take place on Saturday afternoon.