Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter
It was mission accomplished last week for the Fernley Vaqueros at South Tahoe.
Now, after grabbing their first league win, comes another type of challenge.
The Vaqueros shut out the Vikings 43-0, and now face Fallon on Homecoming Friday night in a game that will most likely have huge implications for playoff seeding down the road. But Fernley-Fallon doesn’t need playoff implications to matter.
Although Fallon has mostly owned the head-to-head matchup against Fernley in football since joining the 3A, meetings between the two teams in any sport have become passionate affairs. Plus, Fernley’s two most recent victories in the series, a come-from-behind 32-30 win at Fallon in 2017, and a 24-20 win in the 2019 state championship game, only served to fuel the rivalry even more.
The Greenwave come into Friday’s game with a 3-3 overall record, 2-1 in the Northern 3A, while the Vaqueros are now 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the league.
The Greenwave is led by junior quarterback Matthew Bird, who has completed 27 of 60 passes for 463 yards with four touchdowns and only one interception. He’s also the second-leading rusher for Fallon, with 310 yards on 46 carries. Junior Carson Melendy leads the Greenwave in rushing with 550 yards on 70 carries, and the receiving corps is explosive, averaging 17.4 yards per reception with both Calin Anderson and Wyatt Peek having long receptions of more than 80 yards.
The Vaqueros come into the game off a confidence-building shutout victory at South Tahoe last Friday. Fernley got two rushing touchdowns each from quarterback Bryce Stephens and running back Keyshawn Love, plus a touchdown pass from Stephens to Diego Mendez and a punt return touchdown by Riley McCullar.
And that was just the ones that counted.
McCullar had another punt return touchdown called back because of a penalty, and the Vaqueros had four offensive touchdowns erased by penalties. Sloan said the penalties were the only negative from last Friday’s game.
“I’ll watch the film, assess it and see what it is that we need to fix,” he said.
Aside from that, the game went nearly exactly as the way Sloan scripted it out in his pregame talk with the team.
“I told them I want to set the tone, I want to score right off the bat, I want to get a stop and I want to score again and go for two,” Sloan said.
The Vaqueros scored on their first two possessions, but both were called back by penalties, and those drives ended on a missed field goal and an incomplete pass on fourth down. Even so, the message was clear – South Tahoe wasn’t going to stop the Vaqueros, unless the Vaqueros stopped themselves.
But their third touchdown was the charm, a 34-yard run by Keeshawn Love that made it 7-0. Fernley then got the stop Sloan was looking for, and went down and scored again, on an 11-yard run by Stephens. Then, true to his word, the Vaqueros went for two, lining up in field goal formation before shifting half the team wide left and the other half wide right, leaving Brody Jones lined up in a shotgun formation. The entire defense shifted, and Jones had an easy path to the end zone for a two-point conversion.
The Vaqueros didn’t stop scoring, tacking on a 2-yard touchdown by Stephens and the 70-yard punt return by McCullar before the half, then adding the 35-yard touchdown pass from Stephens to Mendez and a 4-yard run by Love in the third quarter.
“We executed in all three phases, we had big time plays on special teams,” Sloan said. “Even the crowd, the fourth phase, those guys were awesome as well. It’s a pretty cool feeling when you can look over at our sideline and you can see how well it is that we travel.”
Not only did the Vaqueros get their first league win, but Sloan said it was cathartic for a team that needed to see some positive results after a 1-4 start against a tough schedule.
“I told these guys on Monday, we’re not a 1-4 football program. We have played some tough football teams and it makes you battle tested,” Sloan said. “We got good backing from our support of the community, the kids believe it, and when they do football the right way it’s a pretty cool thing to watch.”
Now, as the team hits the stretch run for the last four games of the regular season and the showdown against its biggest rival, Sloan said that tough early-season will begin to pay off.
“I could have easily scheduled certain games, but I said nope, we’re going to play good football programs because I think we’ve got a good football program,” he said. “It’s going to set us up for those key matchups like the one (this) week against Fallon.”
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