Sweet Home’s football players showed grit Friday in a 26-13 win over a stubborn Woodburn team Friday night, Sept. 19.
It was smash-mouth pretty much from the opening kickoff as the Bulldogs, who exited with an 0-3 record, clearly were hoping to turn that around.
I knew Woodburn was going to come out ready to play,” Head Coach Ryan Adams said. “Woodburn came in and punched us in the mouth and made it a good football game. They’ve got some big boys up there.”
It took a while for Sweet Home to get rolling. The Huskies were forced to punt after a short possession to open the game and the snap went over punter Bode Nichols’ head, giving Woodburn the ball on the Sweet Home 7 yard line.
But Sweet Home’s defense picked up where it left off the week before, putting up a suffocating containment to keep the visitors out of the end zone for three plays and kicker Ale Mendez gave them a 3-0 lead with a 5-yard field goal.
Sweet Home then launched an 11-play drive that ended with quarterback Kyle Zajic hitting Trenton Templin with an 18-yard pass to put the Huskies ahead 6-0 with two minutes on the clocks. Woodburn blocked the point-after attempt to leave the score there going into the second quarter.
Sweet Home’s defense held the Bulldogs to three plays and the Huskies got the ball back and pushed to the Woodburn 23 when a bad snap on fourth down sailed over Zajic’s head and the visitors took over at their 34 and put on their longest drive of the night, to the Sweet Home 1, where the defense stopped them, thanks in part to a holding penalty that set Woodburn back to the 13, where Mendez drilled his second three-pointer of the night to even the score.
The Huskies responded with another drive mixing passes and slashing runs, to march 75 yards in eight plays, capped by a 10-yard run by Sam Barringer for their second touchdown of the night with 35 seconds on the clock. Keeghan Gittins was able to get the kick off this time and Sweet Home took a 13-6 lead into the locker room.
But the biggest play of the drive came two plays earlier when Zajic, under pressure and scrambling to the Bulldogs’ sideline, launched a desperation throw down the sideline that was pulled in by Brayden McClure at the 10 for a 29-yard completion.
McClure said he could see that Zajic wasn’t finding any open receivers on the play side as he ran down the sideline.
“I just ran that backside route and I was looking at my quarterback and he was covered up. He saw me and it ended up coming to me and I had to make the play,” he said.
Woodburn went to a ball-control game for most of the second half in which Sweet Home had the ball three times, scoring twice.
In the third quarter, Woodburn scored a touchdown when Brady Shaw bulled into the end zone from the 1, and Mendez kicked the point after to even the score.
With 4:30 on the clock in the third quarter, Dillan Davis scored on a 10-yard sweep, and Gittins delivered another point after to give the Huskies the lead again, 20-13.
Their final score came with 2:30 on the clock in the fourth, when Luke Rosa scored on a 1-yard run to cap a nine-play, 47-yard drive, with Gittins adding the PAT.
Down by two touchdowns with two minutes to go, Woodburn marched down the field with a mixture of passes and runs that elicited five first downs, moving 69 yards before senior linebacker Alex Bachand put a stop to the Bulldogs’ momentum by sacking Woodburn quarterback Mason Pickett. A final field goal attempt by Mendez missed.
“I was just trying to keep my head,” Bachand said. “They were driving down the field. I was like, ‘it’s the next play’ – next play mentality.
“I saw him roll out, and I just needed to go make my play. Our coaches teach us to roll outside linebacker, just to fire, attack straight away.”
Sweet Home finished with 145 yards on the ground, with Zajic, a junior, adding 84 more through the air on 10 for 13 passing, with one interception on a deep pass to Davis who was outmuscled by the Bulldogs’ Shaw in a battle in the air for the ball.
The Huskies cleaned up their act from the previous week, in which they had seven turnovers, with only that one this time.
Woodburn had 141 yards on the ground, but Sweet Home limited Pickett, also a junior, to 44 yards passing on a seven-for-12 performance.
Sweet Home was 5-8 on third down conversions, holding the Bulldogs to 3-11.
The offense had 15 first downs to 14 for Woodburn.
Individual statistics were not available.
“They had to grind out and kind of gut check, you know, what kind of football team we are at halftime, and they responded well,” Adams said of his team. “We had three goal line stands with our defense, that forced them into either a turnover or a field goal attempts.
“Twice in the second half we got goal line stops, and so that’s a huge testament to our defense. They showed up like we expect them to.”
Adams acknowledged that the Huskies needed the kind of challenge that Woodburn brought to town.
“That kind of added some extra incentive to grow, get better, more consistent,” he said. “I thought we did that,” noting that the defense got a decisive stops on the visitors, forcing two field goals, and the final stop in the final period.
“I was really proud of how we responded in that second half, getting stuff done. That’s the thing we’re going through right now, just learning how to win consistently.”
The Huskies are 3-0, which they were last year after beating Woodburn on the road, and now they get a big test: North Bend on the road.
North Bend is 1-2 after a win at Astoria and losses at Estacada (2-2) and Philomath (2-1). This will be the Bulldogs’ first home game after a previous Week Two matchup with Gladstone was canceled.
Last year the Huskies were 3-0 heading into a home game against North Bend, which they lost 20-12.
Adams said that this week’s game is “a big one for us.”
“We’re about to go into our toughest week of the year so far, with North Bend next Friday,” he said. “The kids recognize that.”
The difference this year is, he said, Sweet Home has “been here before.”
“We have some experience being in this situation,” he said. “ You know, they had to grind out and kind of gut check, you know, what kind of football team we are at halftime, and they responded well. So I’m just really excited to kind of see how they continue to respond on that, going into an even tougher opponent.”
