In another Los Padres League
matchup, Santa Ynez hosts the Templeton Eagles for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff. The
Pirates enter the game with a 4-2 overall mark (2-1 in league play), while the
visitors are 5-1, their lone loss coming against perennial favorite St. Joseph.
“We’re going to have our
most physical ball game yet,” Santa Ynez head coach Ken Gruendyke promised. “I
say this every week, but we’ve got to keep playing better. We are anticipating
a hard-fought game.”
The Pirates, who slipped
past Cabrillo 7-0 on homecoming before shutting down Morro Bay last weekend,
must find a way to counteract the Eagles’ aggressive tendencies on both sides
of the ball, the coach said. Templeton feasts on blitzing, which means Santa
Ynez quarterback Tyler Shean needs to offset inevitable pressure.
“We need to throw the ball
more than last week,” Gruendyke said, referring to the victory at Morro Bay in
which quarterback Tyler Shean tossed for only 50 yards. “We’ll do it to keep
Templeton guessing, in terms of their blitzing. If we can be effective that
way, we’ll have some success.”
The coach expects Templeton
to rely on its running game as much as possible.
Phone messages left by the
Valley Journal for Eagles’ head coach Dave Harper weren’t returned before press
deadline.
On Friday night against
Morro Bay, the Pirates registered their second shutout in a row, thanks partly
to few penalties and only one turnover. A week after blanking Cabrillo on
homecoming night, Santa Ynez manhandled favored host Morro Bay, 21-0, doing so
without the likes of ailing Chris Unzueta and John Morgan. (A handful of
players shaking off injuries and the flu, said Gruendyke, were in wait-and-see
mode.)
Although senior quarterback
Shean tossed for a modest number of yards, he didn’t throw a pick. Santa Ynez
and Morro Bay each ended the first quarter locked in a defensive stalemate. But
the visitors broke through before halftime, denting the scoreboard when Rowan
Di Mase ran in from five yards out, though the point-after try
failed.
After intermission, Shean
let his feet do the talking. With help from his offensive line, the
signal-caller galloped 75 yards, including 65 for a third-quarter touchdown.
Scott Arellano scored on the 2-point conversion attempt, giving the visiting
Pirates a 14-0 advantage.
Santa Ynez’s defense
continued to hunker down, holding up its end of the bargain. The offense,
meanwhile, went to work again the final quarter, with Shean reaching pay dirt
on a quarterback sneak. The PAT made it 21-0 and for all intents and purposes,
the game was over.
“Once again, our run game
was effective,” Gruendyke said. “Tyler had a big game
running the option. We did a good job blocking up front.”
Arellano paced the victors
with 98 of the team’s 248 yards rushing yards. Javiar Trujillo supplied 60
more. A.J. Woronovich pulled in three catches for 27 yards.
Morro Bay amassed 260 on the
ground, led by Bronson Gonzalez’s 150, but the team
couldn’t find the end zone. The hosts managed only 32 yards through the air.
“We had really good focus,
and our kids realized it was a must-win game,” Gruendyke said. “(Morro Bay) was
in the same type of position, but our kids did it. It’s a similar situation
this week; if we knock off Templeton, it adds to our credibility.”
Extra point: Prior to the
Templeton game this week, members of the 1969 Santa Ynez High’s CIF
championship team will be honored.
Black and white photo on
page 23
Members of the Santa Ynez High 1969 Class “A” CIF
Champions, include, first row: Mark
Henning, Dan Paola, Terry Bennett, Boyce Tibbetts, Perry Duffy, Rick Johnson,
Mike Waterman, Mike Sell; second row: Gary Brown, Jerry Lunde, Mike Wipf, Tom
Hobson, Johnny Hansen, David Wilkes, Frank Alegria, Rocco Roberts; third row:
Steve De Laver, Mike McClellan, David Nelson, Chuck McLenithan, Loren Strong,
David Freeman, Dan Fitzgerald; fourth row: Mark Mendenhall, Tom McCord, Sam
Johnson, John Johansen, Lee Aulman and Wayne Hall.