A year ago, the Fernley High School football team came into the final game of the regular season to face Sparks, coming off a loss to Spring Creek and with the possibility of going to Spring Creek for a rematch in the first round of the playoffs.
Last week, the Vaqueros found themselves in the exact same situation, hoping it wasn’t just a case of déjà vu.
Based on their performance against the Railroaders, the Vaqueros have the chance to make sure it turns out different.
Fernley needed just 12 seconds to get on the board and kept scoring all the way through their final possession before running out the clock in a 58-6 win over Sparks.
The Vaqueros will be the No. 5 playoff seed and play at Spring Creek Friday at 6 p.m. in the first round of the Northern 3A playoffs. The winner will play at Truckee, which is the No. 1 seed and has a first-round bye.
All of that lines up just as it did a year ago, when the Vaqueros lost a heartbreaker at home to Spring Creek, then needing to beat Sparks to guarantee a playoff spot, they struggled to put the game away before winning 36-20. Then, they went on the road and got blown out 39-16 in the rematch in Spring Creek.
This time, the Vaqueros were coming off a 34-13 loss at Spring Creek heading into Friday’s game against Sparks, but coach Anfernee Sloan said it was a noticeably different situation as the team prepared for last week’s game, and he believes it can be different this week as they face the Spartans again in the playoffs.
“Last year it was kind of just an up and down roller coaster, and they kind of hung around the entire football game, and it wasn’t good, right?” Sloan said. “And then we get to the playoffs and we just get our freaking stuff handed to us. But I think this is a different football team with a little bit of different energy to it right now.”
Sloan said the players were upset, they knew the coaches weren’t happy with how they performed in Spring Creek in their loss on Oct. 18, but they responded very well, unlike a year ago,
“Like I told you, it’s part of being a man,” Sloan said. “You guys are going to accept it, how you respond to it, moving forward the big thing, and they answered the call. They put their hard hats on, they got their lunch pails, they put the women and children to bed and went back to work.”
Keeshawn Love took a handoff 65 yards for a touchdown on the first paly of the game, giving the Vaqueros a 6-0 lead just 12 seconds into the game. That was the first of three touchdown runs for Love, whose 47-yarder made it 18-0 with 5:13 still left in the first quarter.
It was 38-6 at the half, and Love capped the opening drive of the second half with a 2-yard run for a 45-6 lead.
Love finished with 211 yards rushing on 12 carries, and finishes the regular season with 1,864 yards and 19 touchdowns on 189 carries.
Riley McCullar needed only four carries to add 102 yards rushing and two touchdowns, a 21-yarder in the second quarter to make it 32-6, and a 36-yarder that capped the scoring. He also intercepted two passes, and both times the Vaqueros scored on the next play.
Jayden Scripilliti added his first varsity touchdown, Diego Mendez scored once and Joey Machado blocked a punt and returned it 35 yards for a score.
It was the kind of all-around strong effort that Sloan compared to the win over Fallon and a stark contrast to the way the Vaqueros played against Spring Creek, and Sloan said the difference was more than the quality of the opponents.
“Yeah, were we probably the better team on paper? 100 percent,” he said. “But at the same time, you know, I was happy to still see that they just played a completely different style of football. It was very confident, very enthusiastic, just high energy. I think the big thing was being able to see the guys play the game the right way, to execute what their assigned, all the things I kind of touched on that we didn’t do last week when we played Spring Creek.”
So now, after taking care of business against Sparks, the Vaqueros head to Spring Creek for the second time in three weeks, to face a team Sloan says he knows they can beat despite that loss two weeks ago. For one thing, the Vaqueros ran for 299 yards at 7.7 yards per carry, and trailed only 14-7 in the fourth quarter despite playing poorly.
“I do believe that we are a contender, I do believe that we are a very scary 5 seed, in my opinion, because we could easily get a two seed, so a very scary five seed that’s got some good energy right now,” Sloan said. “Just the energy, the attitude, the way they just got that focus in their wyes, it’s different compared to last year, for sure.
“You bring that kind of football team, it’s going to be very hard to beat us,” he added.
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