Season-ending loss does not detract from Crushers season

On a brisk night in Danville, the glorious Vintage High football team’s season came
to an end with a 14-3 loss to the San Ramon Valley Wolves in a CIF North Coast
Section Div. I semifinal playoff game.

Though the disappointment is fresh at present, if you are a Crusher fan, one loss
does not detract from this team’s success.

With the win, No. 4 San Ramon will take on No. 2 Freedom (Oakley) on Saturday
night at Heritage High in Brentwood. The No. 8 seeded Crushers reached this point
by defeating No. 1 seeded Antioch 24-21 in double overtime on Nov. 9. Numerous
postseason games were postponed multiple times in lieu of the Northern California
wildfires, specifically the Camp Fire in which Paradise, CA, in Butte County was
the epicenter. The fires produced unhealthy air quality which led to the
aforementioned postponements.

Both teams entered the game in compromised situations on the injury front. The
Crushers were minus two starting offensive linemen and quarterback Jacob Aaron
while San Ramon was without starting outside linebacker Tristan Sinclair, who is a
four-star athlete with a verbal commitment to Stanford.

The game started in promising fashion with Mauricio Castro returning the opening
kickoff 61 yards to the San Ramon 38. Vintage’s offense reached the Wolves 4 but
had to settle for a 22 yard Eddy Gonzalez field goal. Being limited to a field goal in
that scenario proved to be a harbinger of things to come.

Every time it looked like the Vintage offense was chiseling away at San Ramon,
either a fumble or untimely penalties derailed the Crushers. Vintage fumbled five
times and while it retrieved all of them, it led to unfavorable down and distance
situations. When field position and points are at a premium, those miscues hurt.
On two other occasions, the Crushers got a takeaway in Wolves territory. The first
one was a Drew Hatfield fumble recovery of a muffed punt at the San Ramon 28.
The Crusher offense mustered no points.

The second takeaway came with 6:53 left in the game with San Ramon leading 7-3.
The Wolves achieved that lead on 12 yard touchdown pass from Brandon Cammisa
to Jake Burton on a transcontinental screen pass. Jesus Galvan’s fumble recovery
at the San Ramon 38 appeared to put Vintage in prime position to win but the
offense could not generate a first down. San Ramon marched down the field to ice
the game on Jacob Himan’s 2-yard run with 1:17 left in the contest.

The deeper a team gets into the postseason, the margin for error shrinks. You can
waste those opportunities against Sonoma in Week 6 but in the semifinals of the
NCS Div. I playoffs, the inability to cash in on such chances will send you home.

Another underlying theme to this contest, throughout the season and really since
Dylan Leach was named the head coach in April 2016, the Crushers have prided
themselves on being better conditioned and more physical than their opponents.
On Saturday, they faced a team that believes in the same philosophy.

“Up front they were tougher than us,” Leach said. “They beat us up. I thought we
played well defensively. Normally if we hold a team to 14 points we’re going to win.
We hurt ourselves with a couple of bad penalties and we fumbled five times.”

“Going forward we need to continue to stress the importance of our offseason and
in season workouts. When you have multiple guys getting banged up, we can’t
expect a second or third string guy or in tonight’s case we played six sophomores.
I love what they did to us because that’s exactly what I want to do to other people.”

The narrative of “you are only as good as your last game” is a stock line that is
often uttered. I have never agreed with that statement. Granted, a team’s final game
is the last memory of a season but short of winning the section or state title, no
team ends their season on a happy note. I look at a season like a resume in that it
is the body of work over a period of time. Anyone with a clear conscience should
look at the 2018 Crushers’ resume as one that checks all boxes.

Vintage won its first league title since 2005, when it finished in a three-way tie for
first place as members of the Monticello Empire League with Napa and Vacaville.
In 2018, the Crushers vacated the Sac Joaquin Section for the NCS and as
members of the newly formed Vine Valley Athletic League blasted their way to a
league crown with second place American Canyon being the only team to
remotely challenge them. Vintage won that game 27-14 on Oct. 5.

The Crushers won their first postseason game since 1986 as they took James
Logan (Union City) to the woodshed 36-0. One week later, Vintage traveled to
Antioch and broke the Panthers’ heart with the aforementioned double overtime
win.

Another thing to keep in mind, this team started the season 0-2 and went on a
10-game winning streak. Process that for a moment, in high school football, regular
seasons are 10 games. Two games are 20 percent of the season. Many teams that
start 0-2 do not bounce back. Well, the 2018 Crushers were not many teams.

You have to understand the program’s journey. Before Leach arrived as head coach,
Vintage football took a back seat locally to Napa and to a lesser extend Justin-Siena,
American Canyon and even St. Helena. The Crushers have since moved to the
front of the line. Leach has assembled an outstanding coaching staff. The strength
and conditioning program continues to improve along with player leadership. When
you have those elements, your program culture is in a great place. The playoff
experience will be valuable to the JV kids that were on the postseason roster.

“It brings excitement for the younger kids that got to come up,” Leach said. “With
the fires, we might have had 24 extra practices. That is invaluable because most
other schools packed their gear away a long time ago.”

Speaking of the JV kids, the Crushers went 9-0-1 under head coach Kyle Schuh
and 8-1 on the freshmen level. I’m usually the first one to emphasize “pump the
brakes” when it comes to JV success. I’ve seen many great JV teams flounder
when arriving on the varsity. With this program, however, the machine appears so
well-oiled that I see no reason to think this success does not continue.

The Crushers are 22-11 in Leach’s three years and they were 2-4 in his first six
games (20-7 since that time). In Vintage’s aforementioned 10-game winning streak,
six were by point margins North of 20. Translation, there is nothing fluky about
the Crushers recent success.