LOWER LAKE — The Lower Lake Trojans, a team that coach Stan Weiper hopes will be a sleeper in the North Central League I North title race later this season, sleepwalked their way through four quarters against St. Helena Friday night, and in the end had a rude 33-8 awakening.
The defeat was the second in as many games for the Trojans on their homefield.
St. Helena fullback Zeke Valdevia, in his first varsity season for the Saints, led the onslaught with three touchdowns from 38, 37 and 5 yards and was simply unstoppable as far as the Trojans were concerned.
But this game was a groaner from the start for Lower Lake, whose only score came on a 56-yard Stephen Whitcomb-to-Ryan Walker pass play early in the fourth quarter.
With that single exception, the Trojans showed little vigor. They had only 81 yards of offense in the first half — 60 of those yards coming on a 60-yard, 10-play drive that ended with their running out of downs on the Saints” 21-yard line just before the half.
Lower Lake”s hoped-for one-two Michael Bell-Chris Perry running punch was hopeless. Bell gained only 29 on 10 carries; Perry was even less productive with 18 yards on eight carries, a week after he ran for 133 yards in an opening-game loss to John Swett.
St. Helena (2-0) played possum with the Trojans during a first quarter in which the Saints compiled only nine yards of offense. Lower Lake didn”t do much better, gaining only 17 yards in four possessions.
But the Saints changed the situation abruptly when they began an 11-play, 88-yard drive that ended with Valdevia”s 38-yard power burst with 6:11 left in the period.
The St. Helena march was a reversal from which the Trojans could never recover. Lower Lake was set up in scoring position at the Saints” 20 when a bad center snap resulted in a semi-blocked punt.
It was all St. Helena after that, with the Saints taking a 14-0 first-half lead after the Trojans turned the ball over at their 37 on their third fumble of the night.
Valdevia scored his third touchdown to climax a 65-yard drive on six plays and Saints quarterback Morgan Densberger scored on a 25-yard bootleg to cap an eight-play, 69-yard drive in the third quarter.
“We took a major step back tonight,” said a glum Weiper. “We were off our game entirely. We had opportunities early. We could have had the lead in our first half, but we ran the wrong steps, the wrong plays.
“We just did not function very well, so we gotta go back and start over,” Weiper added.
Lower Lake hosts Upper Lake (1-1) next Friday night.
