San Bernardino, CA—On Friday September 4th, 2014 at San Gorgonio High School was a matchup that put the home team, Spartans, against the Kaiser Cats. The Spartans are coming off an impressive 36-7 victory on the road against Citrus Valley in a non-conference matchup. While this was Kaiser’s first game of the season being played due to them having an open week for Week 0.

To open the game the Spartans kicked off to the Cats and the defense came out onto the field and forced an early three and out. It seems that Kaiser had opening season jitters that resulted in them failing to move the ball on the opening drive. In return, the Kaiser defense forced an interception by Strong Safety Leyon Dennis and took it inside the red zone to the 10-yard line. A 9-yard loss and a 15-yard penalty brought the ball back to the 34-yard line. On 2nd and 34 Quarterback Elijah Hernandez threw a laser pass to Wide Receiver Michael Pruitt in the middle of the field for a 34-yard touchdown, followed by the extra point that put the cats up 7-0.

On the following possession the Spartans were looking to bounce back and coughed up the ball once again, but this time it was a fumble. So the Spartans opened up their first drives with turnovers, which is never a great recipe for success. Early on it seemed everything was going Kaiser’s way; especially when the ball went over the Cat’s punter Javier Rocha’s head and he was able to gather the ball and still punt, pinning the Spartans deep in their own territory.

Three minutes into the 2nd quarter with the Cats leading 7-0 had a player penalized for punching a Spartans player in the face. The Spartans took advantage of the penalty on the next play by a 21 yard run via quarterback Nathan Meadors that took them to the 5-yard line. On 3rd and goal the Spartans finally found the end zone with a 7-yard pass from Meadors to Running Back Wesley Hill and followed with an extra point. With under a minute remaining in the second quarter Meadors threw his second touchdown of the day which was a 5 yard pass to Wide Receiver Alvin Patrick to give the Spartans a 13-7 lead with the missed PAT attempt into halftime.

The Spartans came out during the second half determined to increase their lead and that is exactly what they did on the opening drive. It was a 42-yard run by Wesley Hill, which was followed by a 2-point conversion run by Running Back Alvin Bibbs that put them up 21-7. With Kaiser failing to move the ball on the following drive San Gorgonio went down the field into the Cats territory. Looking to put the game away, the Spartans fumbled inside the 10-yard line just when they had begun to gain momentum and were looking to increase the lead. The Spartans would eventually reach that big lead they were striving for with another touchdown by Hill off a 5-yard run that increased the lead to 28-7 with the successful extra point. Everything started to fall apart for the Cats and it showed on the next drive as well with a lost fumble that gave the Spartans great field position at the Cat’s 40-yard line. The Spartans quickly took advantage and scored off of a touchdown run by Meadors and with the PAT made the score 35-7 which would end up being the final score of another dominating performance by the Spartans which brings them to 2-0.

Spartan’s Head Coach Ron Gueringer’s thoughts on the game and his team overcoming the slow start in the first quarter, “Our defense has been playing really well and we had a really good week of practice. Our offense is still making a ton of mistakes but once we got it rolling we started to make plays and putting up 35 points on a good Kaiser defense is always a plus. Even though were still making mistakes it’s going to get better with repetition and I’m really proud of our kids by being down 7-0 and we responded well”.

San Gorgonio has opened up their season with two consecutive blowouts by winning with a combined 71-14. Next week they play at Citrus College vs. a Glendora team that opened up their season with an impressive victory over Alta Loma 24-6. Next up for Kaiser is another road game in San Bernardino, but this time they will try to bounce back from this loss to take on Cajon.

By: Michael Gibson II

Twitter: @MichaelGibsonII