Dos Pueblos football pulled out a 27-8 homecoming-game victory over Hueneme to open Tri-County League action on a windy Friday night at Scott O’Leary Stadium.
In a sloppy game full of penalties on both sides of the ball, the Chargers (3-3, 1-0 Tri-County League) began their quest to reach the CIF-SS playoffs for the second straight season on the right note.
“1-0 in league is the most important thing that happened tonight. Everything else is secondary,” Dos Pueblos head coach AJ Pateras said. “It’s important to win because it’s a league game and we’re building these new rivalries. We play these guys two more times after this year, so to establish our ability to win in league is important.
“I’m proud that we won and disappointed in the penalties and the non-football stuff. It was just very undisciplined and really uncharacteristic. We’ve been really clean all year, penalty-wise… We’ll watch film and we’ll correct it tomorrow morning.”
After a negative play and a delay of game penalty put the Dos Pueblos offense in a hole on the first possession of the night, quarterback Drew Schultz quickly flipped the script.
Schultz dropped back to pass on 2nd-and-17 and quickly took off through the middle of the defense. The senior then turned on the jets and ripped off a 76-yard touchdown run to put his team up 7-0.
“That was electric,” Pateras said of the big run. “We really wanted to balance the offense. I think statistically, we’re balanced, but we weren’t balanced in the run game. We felt that the quarterbacks were just giving the ball a lot, and we had a lot of perimeter stuff with them in the pitch game.
“We were just stressing it really the last two weeks and so that was really nice to see that we could establish the run and maintain the run.”
That score held throughout the first quarter as the Charger defense forced a pair of turnovers on downs to maintain the lead.
The dominance on the defensive end continued in the second quarter, as Dos Pueblos brought constant pressure into the Hueneme and limited the amount of big plays to keep a 7-0 lead into halftime.
“We’ve had almost three shutouts. and then three games where he gave up 40 points. In all three of those games where he gave up 40, I thought we did a really good job (defensively) in a lot of aspects of the game… It would just be tackling or broken plays, or a missed assignment,” Pateras said.
“When we’re really disciplined and we’re playing together, I think we have a really good (defensive) unit. We’ve got a lot of mixed levels of ability, so being able to play clean for the most part was really good to see.”
The Vikings got the ball out of the half and quickly busted off a 52-yard screen play to get down to the DP 14-yard line.
However, the Charger defense buckled down and Nicholas Schares came flying in for a sack on 4th down, forcing a fumble that was recovered by Hunter Haws to take over possession.
The DP offense then went to a ground and pound attack, utilizing 11 straight run plays to get down the field before Chase Johnson barreled in for a 1-yard rushing touchdown. Johnson’s score gave the Chargers a 14-0 advantage with 4:39 left in the third quarter.
That 14-0 lead remained throughout the rest of the third, and the DP offense had a strong chance to add on thanks to a short punt that gave them possession at the Hueneme 44-yard line.
They did just that, as Callan Lee broke free for a 34-yard rushing touchdown to grow the lead out to 21-0 with 9:58 left on the clock.
Following a Hueneme punt on the next drive, the two sides exchanged turnovers as the Chargers coughed up a fumble on an option play but Dos Pueblos’ Kai Hicks hauled in an interception on the very next play to regain possession.
The next two drives ended in punts, giving the Chargers the ball at their own 20-yard line with four minutes to go. DP then turned the ball over once again via an interception, giving the Vikings the ball at the DP 5-yard line.
They took advantage of the field position with a short rushing touchdown and a two-point conversion to cut the deficit to 21-8 with 3:07 to play.
However, the DP offense put the final nail in the coffin on the ensuing drive as Lee rushed for gains of 3, 5 and 4 yards before bursting through a hole and cutting across the field for a 47-yard rushing touchdown and a 27-8 lead, which proved to be the final score.
Lee took over the rushing attack for the Chargers in the second half. After taking five carries for 12 yards in the first two quarters, Lee exploded for 161 yards on 17 carries to go along with his two touchdowns in the second half.
“In the second half, I thought we established the line of scrimmage again, which was good,” Pateras said. “We were able to build off of being able to run the ball. [Lee] is one of our more dynamic guys.
“With shifting him into the backfield, we wanted to see a little bit more dynamic aspects of running.”
Dos Pueblos will have a tough task next week as it hosts defending Tri-County League champion Agoura on Friday at 7 p.m. at Scott O’Leary Stadium.
“We have a tough Agoura team next week, and we’ve played three teams like them with Santa Barbara, Ventura and Santa Ynez,” Pateras said. “We know where we need to improve and we know what it’s going to take to compete at a high level against that team.”