LOWER LAKE — Lower Lake High School”s football fans got their first home-game look at the new team coached by Stan Weiper on Friday night.
They couldn”t be blamed if they thought it looked like the one from last season, which won only one game — ironically against Cloverdale, which demolished the Trojans 40-8 at Gordon Sadler Field.
What the fans didn”t see on Friday night was the Trojans” offense, because with rare exception there wasn”t any in a defeat which dropped their record to 2-2.
Lower Lake, as they say, didn”t take care of the football, turning it over six times. Five times it was on interceptions of A.J. Harris passes. Lower Lake also coughed the ball up on a fumble of the second-half kickoff by normally sure-handed Mike Deakins.
Cloverdale”s Eagles made the Trojans pay for their miscues, converting all but one of the turnovers into touchdowns.
Of the nine occasions they put the ball in play, the Trojans advanced to first-down yardage only twice.
The only Lower Lake touchdown came with 9:21 remaining in the game when Harris put a pass in the hands of one of his teammates — Michael Bell — for only the third time in the game. Bell, one of the few Trojans who acquitted himself well, caught a 15-yard pass while all alone in the corner of the end zone to cap a 44-yard, six-play drive.
Bell also rushed for 75 yards on nine carries, which pretty much accounted for all of the Lower Lake offense.
The Trojans appeared to be in the game only once against Cloverdale, which improved its record to 3-1. That was in the closing moments of the first half when they seemed to be on the verge of cutting a 14-0 Eagle lead in half by driving from their own 13 to the Eagles” 22 on seven plays, beginning with a 32-yard breakaway by Bell.
From there, with 37 seconds in the half remaining, Harris” pass to tight end Jeff Bigelow was complete and Bigelow was knocked out of bounds at the Cloverdale one.
But the play was negated. A Trojan was flagged for holding and that was followed by a 15-yard dead-ball unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, resulting apparently from a Lower Lake player grousing about the call. The 25 yards in penalties assessed against Lower Lake put the Trojans in a second-down-and-32 hole.
For all intents and purposes, though, this game seemed to be ruled by the Eagles from the opening play. A 28-yard run by Cesar Galvan on the Eagles” first offensive play launched what was to become a dominance-building 11-play, 88-yard march, one that consumed more than half of the first quarter. The Eagles moved the entire 88 yards on running plays.
Galvan and running mates Tyler Lawson — who capped the opening drive with a 2-yard run and scored again on another run of 1 yard — and Chayton Osmon had their way with Lower Lake after that.
“It was disappointing,” said Weiper, struggling for some way to make sense of the rout. “I was hoping that for the home opener they would represent themselves a whole lot better. We just had a lot of kids who didn”t play very well and we have a lot of work to do, I guess.
“If this is an indication of where we”re at we”re in real trouble.”
Was this a real reflection of the Trojans? Could they be this bad?
“I hope not,” said Weiper.
Lower Lake continues its interlock schedule next Friday with a home game against the St. Vincent Mustangs of Petaluma. It”s the second of three straight home interlock games for the Trojans, who also host Clear Lake on Oct. 12.
