NCS game played after two weeks of postponements
The 2018 high school football campaign finally came to an end for the Cloverdale Eagles on Saturday, falling to the No. 1 seeded host Kelseyville Knights, 40-21 in the quarter-finals of the North Coast Section Division 5 playoffs.
The game followed two weeks of postponements due to poor air quality as a result of the Camp Fire in Butte County, giving the Eagles a final season record of 7-5.
“Overall I’m very proud of our kids, especially our seniors,” head coach Greg Alexander reflected. “Our seniors took a group that went 3-7 last year and did everything necessary to turn the program around. We still have a lot of work ahead of us in building this program, but I can’t thank our seniors enough for their efforts.”
Cloverdale entered the NCS playoff tournament as the No. 8 seed, soundly defeating No. 9 Arcata, 31-12 at the Redwood Bowl in Humboldt County on Nov. 2. Then came the fire and two weeks of delay, disrupting the practice schedule and forcing the team indoors.
“I would estimate we had five practices over the past two weeks or so,” Alexander noted. “We’ve been getting a lot of film work done, but the time off was not beneficial. We felt like we had some good momentum after the Arcata game and the three weeks off really disrupted our routine.”
Eagles battle Knights
Cloverdale was out to avenge a 22-15 loss to Kelseyville in their regular season meeting in October, but it wasn’t in the cards on Saturday.
The Knights jumped out to an early 14-0 lead and threatened a blowout before the Eagles got going. Cloverdale, led by junior quarterback Shayne Turner and senior running backs Jone Wesele and Cesar Buenrostro, cranked up their ground attack to score a pair of touchdowns and knot the contest at 14-all at the end of one. Kelseyville led 21-14 at the half.
The Knights were clinging to a 26-21 lead late in the third quarter when the game changed on a momentum swinging play.
“It was third and 12 and their quarterback made a fantastic run to get the first down after it looked like we had him stopped,” Alexander noted. “That deflated us and from there they were able to put us away.”
The Knights iced the contest with a pair of insurance touchdowns late in the game to escape with a 40-21 victory.
“Offensively we moved the ball well,” Alexander said. “Defensively we didn’t have many answers, although Kelseyville didn’t sustain a lot of drives, they gashed us with big plays.”
Turner finished up a break-out season with 10 completions on 22 pass attempts for 127 yards and one touchdown, while adding 97 rushing yards on the ground. Other top efforts were had by Wesele (14-75 rushing yards, 2 TDs, 1-28 yards receiving), Buenrostro (3-14 yards rushing, 3-44 yards receiving), Garrett Robertson (1-11 yards receiving, TD), Jesus Maciel (3-27 yards receiving) and Drew Edens (2-17 yards receiving).
