UPPER LAKE — The offense scored three touchdowns and the defense scored three touchdowns. Better balance Lower Lake High School varsity football coach Justin Gaddy couldn”t ask for.
“We keep getting better,” Gaddy said in a quick assessment of his team”s 40-14 non-league varsity football victory over the Upper Lake Cougars on Saturday afternoon in Upper Lake. “We”re a young team that has so much more to improve on, but I did like today”s effort.”
Bouncing back from a 44-20 loss to Durham the previous week, the Trojans” second straight road game proved much more successful on several counts:
— Lower Lake”s offense rushed for 359 yards and three touchdowns. Led by Erick Moreno”s 154 yards on 11 carries, the Trojans nearly had three 100-yard rushers on the day — Mason Sanders (11 for 114) was the second and quarterback Isazah King (3 for 93) came close.
— Lower Lake”s defense put the team ahead to stay when King intercepted a Mike DiAndrea pass and returned it 42 yards for a touchdown with 4:26 left in the first half. When the Cougars closed to 27-14 midway through the fourth quarter, Lower Lake”s defense took charge again, recovering two Upper Lake fumbles in the end zone for touchdowns within a 70-second span to ice the win.
“Ryan Dahneke led the defense,” Gaddy said of his senior linebacker. “Between him and Erick Moreno at linebacker and Kyle Lampela on the line, we really turned it up. Lampela really helped us up front.”
Gaddy predicted two days before Saturday”s game that the Trojans needed their defense to step up, which is exactly what it did. The Trojans forced four turnovers overall, registered three sacks of DiAndrea, two of them by junior defensive lineman Anthony Williams, and limited the Cougars to 139 yards of total offense.
While the Trojans (2-1) did not keep Upper Lake running back Ian Seevers from reaching the 100-yard rushing mark for a third week in row, they did make him work for his 112 yards, which came on 27 carries, including touchdown runs of 3 yards in the second quarter and 4 yards in the fourth.
“We wanted them to play physical and tough football,” Gaddy said of his defensive starters.
Upper Lake coach Alex Stabiner had more than a third straight loss to worry about at the conclusion of Saturday”s action. Several players were nursing injuries and one — DiAndrea — was taken off the field in an ambulance with a possible concussion. Worse yet, Seevers sustained a bayonet fracture in his forearm.
“We”re banged up,” Stabiner said.
Nearly as painful as the injuries were Upper Lake”s four turnovers, giving the 0-3 Cougars 13 in three games this season.
“Our turnover ratio is atrocious,” Stabiner said of 13 giveaways as opposed to only three takeaways for his club.
While the Cougars jumped out to a 6-0 lead on Seevers” first scoring run and stayed within a touchdown of the Trojans for two and a half quarters, they began to wear down as the game progressed in the second half.
“At one point in the game we were both sucking wind,” Stabiner said of the two teams, “but Lower Lake dug down and started to take it away from us in the second half and we didn”t recover.”
“They”ve got some really nice players out there,” Gaddy said of the Cougars. “I loved it how they hung in there the whole way. They didn”t give up.”
Following a scoreless first quarter, Seevers” 3-yard run gave Upper Lake a 6-0 lead that lasted only until Lower Lake”s next possession. The Trojans drove 76 yards in four running plays, the final 42 yards coming on a Moreno run down the Lower Lake sideline to knot the score at 6-6.
The Trojans pushed ahead to stay two plays into Upper Lake”s next possession as King”s long interception return broke the tie. Mauricio Jauregui kicked the extra point to make it 13-6.
A 31-yard punt return by Gabe Anderson gave Upper Lake great starting position at the Lower Lake 29 with less than two minutes to go in the first half, but sacks by Williams and James Clark ended the Cougars” threat.
Upper Lake also drove into Lower Lake territory on its first possession of the second half only to cough up the ball on a fumble after reaching the Lower Lake 26.
One play later it was 20-7 as King burst over the right side of the line and ran up the field virtually untouched for a 68-yard touchdown.
Another quick strike by the Trojans on their next possession — this one 67 yards on three plays — ended with a 39-yard Sanders scoring run to make it 27-6 as Jauregui added the extra point.
The Cougars got back into the game early in the fourth quarter, using a Nicholas Bills 43-yard fumble return to the Lower Lake 2 to set up their final touchdown. A false start backed the Cougars up to the 7-yard line, but Seevers scored two plays later from four yards out. Anderson”s extra-point run closed the gap to 27-14.
Upper Lake”s defense forced a punt a few minutes later, but the kick rolled and rolled and rolled all the way down to the Upper Lake 3. The Cougars tried a run on first down but the ball popped loose and Brendan Maninger was there to smother it in the end zone for a back-breaking touchdown that made it 34-14.
It was nearly an instant replay a little more than a minute later, only this time it was Lampela jumping on the ball at the 1-yard line and rolling into the end zone for the final points of the game.
“We couldn”t get our blocking right, we couldn”t get our snap count right,” a frustrated Stabiner said.
“Lower Lake was running the ball real well, but we were getting stops. They just made the plays at the key times,” Stabiner added.
Both teams open league play next weekend. Lower Lake travels to Fort Bragg on Friday in North Central League I action while Upper Lake hosts California School for the Deaf on Saturday in NCL II action.
