Vintage football preview: Crushers looking to climb the mountain to section title game with a senior-heavy, experienced group

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

Kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

Some games stick with you, and you can never forget them. But the best way is to move forward and try to get over the hump again. 

Last season, the Crushers went 7-5 with a 1-4 record in Redwood Empire Conference Adobe league play. But the season ended in the semifinals of the CIF North Coast Section Division 2 playoffs.  

However, there is plenty of reason to believe Vintage will be as tough as ever this fall. 

One of the main reasons for this is the fact that they have tons of returning talent.  

The Crushers return a wide variety of players to use out of the backfield. They will be coming at teams with a variety of different looks, too.  

Leading the backfield are Grant Huss and Tysin Costella. Both were nice options last season and should be even better this year. 

Huss also enters his third season at the varsity level and has taken over leadership of the running backs. 

“I’m the oldest in the room,” Huss explained. “So I have to teach them everything that I’ve gained over the years.”

Also back is Sean Butler. Last season he was just learning the game. With a full offseason under his belt, he can be an electric player for the Crushers. 

“The kid’s explosive, and he’s fast, and I think now that he’s got a year and a half of running with the ball,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach pointed out about Butler. “You got to remember he didn’t touch the ball once his freshman or sophomore year, and so giving him the ball last year on a limited basis was to get him ready and prepared for this year. We feel that he’s going to have a great year and be a major factor for us.”

With all the different options available, there should be no trouble finding the right player for the situation that’s needed. 

“I’ll tell you this: Grant Huss, Cooper Weiss, and Braden Shchuh. Those three right there. I can do so many things with them,” Leach said. “I can move them around. I can play big with them. I can play small with them. I can have them go out on routes. So it’s a luxury to have those guys and to have guys like Ian Tarver and Yoel Casillas right behind them, learning what they do and be able to move around.”

Vintage will also have a new signal caller on Friday nights this season. However, he’s coming in with plenty of ability and even some experience from last season. This is Hunter Weis. 

“No, it’s awesome,” Weis said of becoming QB1. “I sat behind a really good quarterback last year, Blake (Porter), and I was able to learn the system really well. So honestly, It’s not really learning the system. It’s more of just perfecting my craft and getting better at getting better at knowing the system and executing plays.”

Last season, he did a little bit of everything because he is such a great athlete. 

“Hunter’s probably our best running back, our best receiver, our best tight end,” Leach added. “He’s one of those guys that just probably he’s the best guy we have. So he’s grown physically. I think he’s put on about 12 to 15 pounds. Obviously, not fat through that over last year. He had a very successful year last year at Outside Backer. He’s been getting recruited at Outside Backer by all the Ivy League schools and some of the smaller schools around here, Davis and Sac State and San Jose State and things like that. So excited to have him. He’s a great kid, great football player, but a better person.”

Also there to back him up is Wyatt Rohrs. Both are great athletes. Plus, they push each other in practice.  

“It’s awesome. I mean, me and him, like we push each other every day,” Weis explained. “Very competitive, so we always we always have these little competitions in practice to see who’s making the better throws and more accurate. So it’s it’s a really good competition, and it’s good to have him here with us.” 

Up front, the Crushers have a relatively young offensive line. But they have already grown as a unit over the summer. 

“I think we’ve grown a lot. To be honest, I think today was our best practice yet,” Martinez said after practice on August 13. “We showed a lot of camaraderie today, good teamwork. I think at the start of the year we were a little shaky. We didn’t know our assignments. We were missing blocks, but I think just every day we keep working, keep lifting each other up, and get better as we go.”

Leading the line have been returning center Sebastian Martinez and David Perez. 

“The line will be young, and they’ve grown up because of the leadership behind Sebastian Martinez and David Perez, and I’ll even put Johnny Holhouse in that mix as the tight end, Leach added. “I think because we always add our tight ends on the line. So those three guys, as returning seniors who played a lot last year, been great leaders. They’re on the leadership council, all three of them, and so really excited about them. Teaching the ways of how we do things to the young kids, like Matteo Ortega and Gabriel Ortega and Jackson Holley and Amon Patel at the other tight end spot. So been doing really well, and and even Ralphie Avina has been playing extremely well. So excited about all those guys, but it stems from the leadership from the seniors from last year.” 

Others returning for the Crushers this season are Reilly Schmitz, Taylor Farmer, Jackson Holley, Cooper Weis, Parker Dahl, Jaxon Keener, Raul Ortega, Braden Schuh, Dominic Carducci, Jayden Sass, and Johnny Holthouse. 

“We got a good group of leaders,” Holthouse explained. “We got a kind of we call it our LC. It’s just a bunch of guys who are disciplined, and we make sure the team is in check, and we’re getting everyone right and making sure everyone’s all together.” 

Summer was a time to get better

Vintage never likes to take an easy summer. They like to show up and get work in, which is precisely what they did this summer. 

They participated in the Casa Grande 7-on-7 passing tournament where they faced some of the best competition in the North Bay. 

“I think it was great because a lot of the guys over the summer, you could tell some of the competitiveness was dropping off a little bit,” Keener said of the importance of the summer competition. “When we got to that tournament, and we were playing those guys, it really got everyone going. It got everyone, like I was saying, to just buy in even more. You could see the competitiveness come out of guys, and I think we got a tough team, and going to these tournaments and playing these teams really shows that you know our guys want to win. They have it in them.” 

The Crushers also went to Hayward, as they always do, to face Campolindo, McClymonds, and the host Farmers. 

“I mean it’s always fun to go compete against other teams and and see what you got, Leach explained of the summer competition. “I don’t put a ton of credence on seven on for us offensively, obviously defensively, it’s good for us to do. So now it’s just fun to go out there and get our guys to compete against other guys.” 

New Year with fresh opponents on the slate after moving down a league in the Redwood Empire Conference 

The Crushers are known for playing a challenging non-league slate. They hadn’t done that in years because of a gauntlet league schedule, but will do so in 2026 once again. 

It will all begin at Memorial Stadium on August 28th when Vintage hosts Benicia at 7 pm. 

They will then have a trip to Mill Valley to take on Tamalpais on September 5th at 2 pm.

On September 11th, I’ll spend my birthday with the Crushers as they host Woodside. The Wildcats are a Central Coast Section team coming to Napa. 

After that, Vintage will have its bye week after three contests. This is just how it worked out schedule-wise, but the coach would rather not have a bye at all. 

“So excited to have those guys. I mean, we haven’t seen a few of these teams when we scheduled Tam; they were like a really good team in a higher division,” Leach explained of the nonleague slate. They moved down a little bit this year, but looking forward to them. Benicia with CJ over there running the things is going to be tough. They have a pro-style situation. They run the ball. They can throw the ball. They got a really good returning sophomore. He’ll be a junior this year, a quarterback who gets out of the pocket and does a lot of things well. Really excited about Woodside. Woodside is a perennial powerhouse down in the in the South Bay, and so excited for them. I think they were like 11 and one or something last year, or 12 and two or something like that. So really excited about them, and they actually run a really, really tough, distinct offense in a like a double wing tee type thing with a ton of misdirection, and that’s just going to prepare us for Maria Carillo down the road.”

Finally, Vintage will end the non-league portion of the campaign with Big Game LV (55), where they are the home team against Napa on September 25th. 

The Redwood Empire Conference Valley division play then starts on October 2nd. The Crushers dropped down from the Adobe League after realignment happened before the season to a league that fits them better. That being said, the league is still tough. 

“I would much rather have a non-week zero game and just play 10 straight personally,” Lead pointed out. “But no one really kind of wants that route, and so we’re kind of forced to have a bye.” 

To begin October, they’ll host Redwood-Larkspur on October 2nd. 

They’ll end their three-week stretch of home games on October 9th when they host Casa Grande. This one should be fun, considering Leach and Casa Grande head coach John Antonio have a mutual respect for each other and that the teams have played some incredible games in years past. 

On October 16th, Vintage will visit Petaluma. That will then be followed by Senior Night against Rancho Cotate-Rohnert Park, which was a thriller last year when Vintage won 10-7. 

Finally, it’s a pair of road games to end the season. It all begins on October 30th when the Crushers visit Santa Rosa to face Maria Carrillo. 

Then, they visit Ukiah to end the season. Ukiah ended Vintage’s season last year, so this should be an interesting game as well. 

 “I think that there’s a really tough league ahead of us, and we understand what we’re getting into,” Leach said of the REC-Valley. “We’ve had to prep for really tough teams for the last few years, and so I think we’ll have an understanding of what we need to do.”