San Marcos girls flag football dominated all facets of the game en route to a 41-0 rout of crosstown rival Santa Barbara High on Thursday at Warkentin Stadium.
The Royals (13-3, 4-1 Channel League) totaled three interceptions on the defensive end and put together a balanced attack on the offensive end to complete the shutout of the Dons (4-5, 1-4 Channel League).
“In a rivalry game, you never know what’s going to happen,” San Marcos head coach Walter Bazylewicz said. “There’s a lot of emotions involved and those types of things, but the girls were focused during the week of practice, and for us, when we have a good week of practice it usually shows on game night.”
“You see what works out there, and you hope maybe you can steal some of that because obviously there’s a lot of good teams in our league doing good things and we’re seeing that,” Santa Barbara High head coach Travis Mañach said of the rugged Channel League schedule.
“You’ve got to regroup and try to keep everybody’s head up and move on to the next opponent, because you’ve got to be ready every week, twice a week.”
The Dons got off to a strong start on their opening drive, as Laila Hernandez completed a 43-yard catch and run to Shea Gannon to get deep into SM territory.
“[Gannon] loves playing,” Mañach said. “She is still pretty new to the sport, and she just works her tail off to get better every day at practice and she wants to be the best… I need a bunch of Sheas on my team.”
However, the Royals’ defense buckled down and allowed just two more yards on the next four plays to force a turnover on downs. From there, it was all San Marcos.
The Royals offense marched 10 plays down the field and capped off the drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass from Victoria Aldana to Drea Obispo. Mia Richmond hauled in the extra point to take a 7-0 lead at the 3:07 mark of the first quarter.
On the ensuing drive, a Santa Barbara High pass was tipped into the air and brought down by San Marcos’ Rylie Cook, who then took off 20 yards down the field for the pick-six. An extra point from Aldana to Rio Chesluk doubled the lead to 14-0.
“That really just kind of made us feel like we can relax and play,” Bazylewicz said of the pick-six. “When you take the nerves out of it, you take the emotion out of it, and you have that big lead it’s a lot easier to play… That was a big play for us to get to that point.”
Following a punt by the Dons, the SM offense went right back to work and put together another scoring drive. This one went eight plays down the field and ended with a 5-yard touchdown connection from Aldana to Chesluk, who also connected for the extra point to take a 21-0 lead.
SB then had another three-and-out on offense, setting the stage for a 28-yard rushing touchdown by Peyton Sperling to give the Royals a 27-0 advantage, which held until halftime.
Sperling took seven carries for 68 yards on the ground, while Aldana carried the ball 14 times and totaled 102 rushing yards in the win
“We’re trying to get to a point where we are more balanced with our run versus pass,” Bazylewicz said of the rushing attack. “I think it’s just still kind of a carry over from previous years where it was a pass-heavy game, and now we’re trying to build more run into our offense.
“We have people that are proficient at [running] with Peyton, who is a little jitterbug and makes a lot of people miss, and Victoria’s a great runner as well. So we’ve got to take advantage of that and continue to find other ways to run the ball with Janelle [Capuno] and Rio as well.”
The Dons found some momentum coming out of halftime, as they forced SM to punt on its opening drive of the half.
However, that momentum immediately swung back to the Royals as Piper Kittle came up with an interception to give her team possession with strong field position.
The offense took advantage of the turnover, getting down the field thanks in part to a 21-yard run by Capuno. After an 18-yard scamper from Aldana, Chesluk punched in a 1-yard rushing touchdown to make it a 34-0 lead following Kittle’s point-after rush.
SM continued to fire on both ends of the field into the fourth quarter, forcing another Don punt before putting together another scoring drive.
This time, the drive ended with Aldana handing the ball off to Kittle who then tossed a 14-yard touchdown pass to Maya Llewellyn, who snuck behind the defense. Autumn Johnson secured the extra point to bring the advantage to 41-0 with 10 minutes to go.
The Royals’ defense then tacked on one more turnover for good measure on an interception by Mia Richmond on the next drive.
“We know they have a couple of players that can really burn, some speed people. So we had eyes on those people and just made sure that they didn’t get behind us tonight,” Bazylewicz said of his defense’s dominance.
“Our rushers did a great job pressuring the quarterback. The biggest difference between last year and this year is that quarterbacks don’t have any time to throw… That really makes it difficult to get the ball down the field on the deep ball.”
With a running clock for the rest of the fourth, San Marcos cruised to the 41-0 victory.
The Royals will host Ventura on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. for a battle of teams tied for second place in the league. Meanwhile, the Dons will host Pacifica on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.