De La Salle Runs Away From Serra

What can you do in 29 seconds?

If you’re De La Salle, you can completely turn one of the biggest football games of the year upside down.

Faced with the prospect of trailing and giving the ball to Serra to start the second half, Niko Baumgartner recovered a botched handoff and the Spartan offense went 95 yards in four plays to take a 14-3 lead as De La Salle reclaimed its spot atop the Northern California pecking order with a 39-10 victory over the Padres.

“That was a huge momentum turn,” head coach Justin Alumbaugh said.

Rather than kneel out the first half and enter the locker room relieved to simply be on top, Derrick Blanche Jr. broke a tackle and slipped to the sideline for a gain of 47, and Toa Faavae found Jayden Nicholas downfield for a 46-yard touchdown pass with two seconds left in the second quarter.

“To be honest, I was getting yelled at by (defensive coordinator Terry) Eidson for not taking a knee and just going into the half,” Alumbaugh explained. “But I told him, our offensive line is really getting off the ball, and we have guys that can break it at any point.”

It was a complete reversal of the typical De La Salle way, where the Spartans run plays that they’ve been drilled on for years. The touchdown to Nicholas was a route package installed just two days earlier. When Alumbaugh couldn’t come up with a name for the play, Faavae simply called it “Serra.”

“We knew we were only gonna have one chance to run it, and Toa threw a great ball,” Alumbaugh added. “That completely flipped the game.”

Nicholas also stepped up in one of the biggest moments of the second half, forcing a fumble that Anthony Morgan recovered after Dominic Kelley had given the hosts a 20-3 lead with a pair of bruising runs. Kelley found the end zone again just three plays after Morgan’s recovery.

Serra (1-1) showed brief signs of life when Iziah Singleton found the end zone on a 14-yard run after pass interference and roughing the passer flags had taken the Padres into the red zone, but Jaden Jefferson slammed the door with a 28-yard kick return and 43-yard touchdown run just 58 seconds later.

Blanche, who ran for a 24-yard pickup before Jefferson’s touchdown, capped off the scoring on a 62-yard touchdown run with 6:32 remaining. He finished with 183 yards on just 12 carries, while Kelley ran five times for 43 yards. Jefferson went for 51 on just three rushes, and sophomore Duece Jones-Drew ran six times for 39 yards.

A year after being shut out in San Mateo, De La Salle (2-0) won comfortably by forcing four turnovers, with Trisshon Wright and Zay Davis each recording interceptions in the fourth quarter. Ant Dean also blocked a field goal in the second quarter.

The Padres largely controlled the first half with three-star lineman Elias Shamieh, who holds an offer from Colorado State, opening up holes for Nano Latu, but were unable to finish drives. After stopping the Spartans on downs to start the game, Serra came away with just a 29-yard Brody Smith field goal. The visitors had first-and-goal at the 4, but Bubba Vargas blew up a reverse in the backfield and Nemyah Telona sacked Andrew Heneghan on third down.

Faavae ran for a 1-yard touchdown to put the Spartans ahead with 2:14 left in the first quarter after Dean’s 49-yard kick return and a 24-yard Blanche run. Serra got back into the red zone after a Heneghan completion to Clay Hinsdale on fourth down, but Wyatt Ferguson’s tackle for loss brought the field goal unit out once again. Dean blocked the kick to keep the score at 7-3, and Baumgartner’s fumble recovery with 31 seconds left in the first half put the kibosh on a drive that ate up nearly half of the second quarter as Latu and Chris Yoon combined to take the Padres down to De La Salle’s 4-yard line.

“One of the things that you can’t pay for is experience,” Serra head coach Patrick Walsh said of how the game turned after the fumble. “They were more prepared to win the big moments. We kind of took the disappointment from the half and took it into the third, and that’s on me. I didn’t motivate the team.”

Latu ran 14 times for 66 yards, but was held in check after gashing the Spartan defense for 45 yards on six carries within the first quarter.

“We had to shore up our defensive front,” Alumbaugh explained. “There were too many gaps, and they took to the coaching that we gave them at halftime.”

Singleton ran seven times for 60 yards, all in the second half, and Yoon went six times for 55. Heneghan completed 12 of 19 passes for 129 yards, with Hinsdale hauling in five passes for 72.

Hinsdale follows in the footsteps of Cole Harrison, now at Tennessee, and Seamus Gilmartin, now a sophomore at Harvard.

“We’ve got some great tight ends here, and we have a sophomore tight end that played a lot tonight that’s gonna be really special,” Walsh commented, alluding to Jace Cannon.