Vintage football preview: With returning talent all over, Crushers set sites on a deep playoff run

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

kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

It’s always easier to have some fun when you have lots of capable tools to help win games. It’s even better when they’re mostly seniors who have worked for their moment. 

After going 6-5 last season with a 2-3 record in the tough Redwood Empire – Adobe division, Vintage has a lot of key pieces back and is ready to make a run this fall. 

After being named to the All-Redwood Empire Adobe Division team last season, Max Kaufman is back. However, he has now shifted to the offensive line. 

Besides those three, back this season for the Crushers are Sayer Carmichael, Hunter Weis, Riley Marek, Jaden Cunningham, Joel Flores, Bo Lode, Luis Ortega, Johnny Holthouse, and Henry Drozdowicz. 

Another reason for this is the fact that they have so many players from last year’s team back. This just opens up the options since this team already has plenty of experience to lean on. 

Maybe the most key returner to get back healthy this season is do-it-all running back and linebacker Ruben Sanchez. He got hurt a little after the halfway point of last season. However, Sanchez is a weapon to be used all over the field. Not only can he line up wide, but he can also run between and off the tackles, and has speed and athleticism, too. Sanchez will also figure to be a presence on the defensive side of the ball. 

“It’s huge,” Porter pointed out about getting Sanchez back this season. “He’s a great player.  When he gets into space, he’s dangerous, and especially running behind all of our big linemen this year, it’s going to be hard to hard to stop him.” 

But beyond what Sanches brings skill-wise, he is also the heart and soul of the team. He’s a leader and someone who is key to the success. 

“Can’t say enough about Ruben,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach explained. “I mean, I feel so bad for him for going through that, but it is what it is. He’s persevered, he’s broke through the mental block of being hurt, which is a huge thing, and he’s himself again, just another leader. He’s a smart football player, but I felt like going into the game that he got injured, he was probably a top-five player in the league at that point.” 

Also back for his senior season and third under center is Blake Porter. The signal caller is even more comfortable with the offense after a full offseason of lifting and playing baseball.

“It’s really finding the open spots in the field,” Sanchez said of his connection with Porter. “I could trust his confidence to find me, to get open.” 

Porter has also grown to the point where he and Leach have a feel for what to call on offense to make the offense run even better. This is exactly the type of dynamic needed for a quarterback and offensive coordinator.  

“Just the constant leader right now,” Leach said of Porter’s impact. “I think he was about 98% through our speed and conditioning programs. Really changed his body, changed his weight, changed his strength, but more importantly, changed his speed. I think it paid off for him in the baseball season as well. I think he had more steals this year than he’s had the whole his whole career.

Tough schedule awaits Crushers 

Vintage has never shied away from tough competition. This is no different in 2025. 

The only change to the schedule will come in the opener when the Crushers visit former VVAL rival Casa Grande on August 29th. This will be a bit of a style contrast, but it will also see where they’re at right out of the gate. The game will be played at Petaluma High School. 

“I mean, we just wanted to get back to some fun stuff and some rivalries,” Leach said of the addition to the schedule and the opener. “John (Antonio) does a great job with that group over there, and we just figured that our we wanted to have a team that was rated above us as always coming into week zero and and so we felt that that was the perfect mix, not having a huge drive and being able to play a great quality team that’s well-coached.” 

It also gives them a look of a spread offense right away, which is important. 

“I mean, it’s not really contrast for us in general, because we’re styling ourselves around our league,” Leach continued. “So it’s just good to see some spread looks. I mean, obviously, there’s some teams in our league that run spread, but we got a lot of teams that run some power run in our league, too.” 

After that, Vintage will host Fairfield on September 5th in their first home game. That will be followed by a trip to Vacaville to play former Monticello Empire League rival Wood. 

Vintage will then have two weeks at home with a game against Bethel-Vallejo on September 19th. This will be followed by the bye week. 

Fresh out of the bye, Vintage will be the visitors in Big Game 54 (LIV) on October 3rd to end the non-league slate. However, aside from the first game, this non-league slate remains the same as it was last season. 

“The non-league is awesome, Porter said of having basically the same non-league schedule from last year. “It’s a great getting going get us into a groove right before our Adobe League, which is going to be, it’s going to be tough. It’s a lot of great football teams that we’re going to be playing against, and the preseason games are going to help us a lot with getting into a groove and getting our feel for all of our offense and defensive things.”

The gauntlet of the Redwood Empire – Adobe Division starts on October 10th when Vintage hosts Rancho Cotate. After that, they’ll host Marin Catholic on October 17th. 

Then, on October 24th, they’ll visit Windsor. This is followed by a rare 2 pm home game against San Marin on November 1st. 

The season ends with a road trip to Santa Rosa to face Cardinal Newman on November 7th. This tough league schedule is always something they look forward to. 

“The talent of every position on the other team, it’s just great to compare ourselves to them,” Sanchez said of the tough league slate. “Which is great.” 

Offseason activities have the Crushers ready to go

As usual, the offseason was used to see what their strengths are and weaknesses are and have been. 

The major thing they did was a lineman competition with Campolindo and host Hayward. In both the lineman competition and the 7-on-7 portion, they played well against some of the best in the section. 

“It definitely showed us our weak spots where we could be strong,” Sanchez added. “It really was like a template for our season.” 

During that trip to Hayward, the Crushers also learned how much depth they have, as they were missing a good number of players due to summer baseball. 

“I mean, it’s about depth, really, because we have, I believe, in our program, I think we have about 24 to 26 kids that play baseball,” Leach explained. “Down in Hayward, I believe we had, maybe like all the NVBC 17s and 19s were gone. So we just played with the depth that we had.” 

They also did 7-on-7s with St. Helena during the summer. It was definitely a busy summer for the Crushers. 

“So we do a lot of seven-on-stuff,” Kaufmann said. “We went down to St. Helena. Did some seven-on and lineman stuff there. Just going up against other guys is really good.”