MIDDLETOWN — When you’re closing in on 300 career victories like Bill Foltmer is at Middletown High School, the hard work put in by your longtime assistant coaches often gets overlooked.
“My assistants did a great job getting us ready for this game,” Foltmer said after the Mustangs dominated Pinole Valley 34-6 in the opening round of the North Coast Section Division 6 playoffs Friday night at Bill Foltmer Field.
In a game that was even more lopsided than the final score indicates, the Mustangs (7-4) now advance to the semifinals against No. 1 seed Salesian (7-2) on Nov. 20 in Richmond at 1 p.m.
Moke Simon, Middletown’s defensive coordinator, Kurtis Woodard, the team’s secondary coach, and offensive line coach Tom Knowles all received praise from Foltmer following career win No. 296.
“I thought Moke did a really good job with the defense tonight,” Foltmer said. “Their only touchdown came after we muffed a punt that gave them the ball inside our 10-yard-line. Besides that, they never came close to scoring. Moke had these guys ready to go.”
Middletown’s cornerbacks and safeties shut down Pinole Valley’s wide receivers and helped take away what has been a healthy Spartans passing attack this season.
“Kurtis works with these guys and they (secondary) never let Pinole Valley’s wide receivers get behind them tonight,” Foltmer said.“They completed only two passes.”
“Tom did a great job with the offensive line and he called almost all of the plays tonight,” Foltmer said of a Middletown rushing game that finished with 258 yards and all five of the Mustangs’ touchdowns, three of them by Elijah Diazh, who had 130 yards on 20 carries, and two others by Brandon Costlow (72 yards on 13 carries).
Middletown’s passing game even got in its licks as quarterback Luke Hoogendoorn went 5-for-8 for 87 yards and no interceptions.
“When he had time, he put the ball on the money,” Foltmer said of Hoogendoorn.
Pinole Valley’s touchdown briefly tied the game at 6-all in the second quarter. Middletown answered with a long drive capped by a 10-yard Diaz run to put the Mustangs in front 13-6. Middletown was knocking on the door again in the final seconds of the half when it turned the ball over on a fumble at the Pinole Valley 2.
Middletown took the second-half kickoff and drove down the field to go up 20-6 on a Diaz 1-yard run. A 7-yard Diaz run later in the third quarter pushed the Mustangs’ advantage to 27-6.
Costlow’s second touchdown of the game, a 16-yard run in the fourth quarter, made it 34-6. He also scored on a 7-yard run in the first quarter for the game’s first points.
“Diaz and Costlow both ran the ball well,” Foltmer said. “We moved the ball well all night but with no breakaway speed, we had lots of long drives.”
Looking ahead to next weekend’s semifinals, Foltmer said no one knows his team better than longtime Salesian head coach Chad Nightingale.
“And we know them too,” Foltmer said.
Middletown and Salesian have hooked up for a number of memorable regular-season and postseason games going back more than a decade, most recently in 2018 when Middletown upset Salesian in the Division 5 section finals.
Foltmer said he’s more than pleased with how far the Mustangs have come in just a few months, and he said the team’s assistant coaches are largely responsible for that improvement.
“When the season started we weren’t a very good football team, but we finished second in our league, we went 5-0 at home, and now we’re in the section semifinals,” Foltmer added.
