After two season-ending losses, Escalon finally gets payback against Hilmar.
“We finally got that monkey off our back.”
That was the first message out of the mouth of Escalon High football coach Andrew Beam with his players gathered in the end zone after an impressive 34-21 win over Hilmar at McSweeney Field on Friday night.
The Cougars (5-0, 1-0 Trans-Valley League) avenged a pair of gut-wrenching losses to the Yellowjackets in the playoffs the last two years.
“A lot of guys on this team have had seasons end to Hilmar,” Beam said. “Hilmar has gotten the best of us, they’ve earned it. Our kids took the pressure this week and they handled the pressure. This feels good. It’s a good win for our program.”
Beam handed out a championship belt for the most outstanding player of the game to senior running back Colton Panero, who finished with 138 yards on eight carries, including a 58-yard touchdown run.
“This belt is an individual award, but this is for everybody,” Panero said. “If it wasn’t for the big guys up front doing their job I wouldn’t have gotten this.”
Junior fullback Luke Anderson did a lot of the heavy lifting inside for the Cougars, ramming his way to 109 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries.
After establishing Anderson inside, Beam took advantage of that success by dipping into his playbook. Three or four times quarterback Ty Harris faked an inside handoff and gave the ball to Panero or Kaden Christensen on a belly sweep that turned into big gains.
Panero broke off some long runs on the play to the outside, including his 58-yard touchdown run that gave Escalon a 20-7 lead with 10:23 left in the third quarter.
The belly sweep worked for Christensen on the Cougars’ final drive to convert on third down to help Escalon run out the clock.
“Hilmar is very aggressive toward our first run option,” Beam said. “They had success. We found a play that we haven’t used a lot in the belly sweep. It was really successful without a doubt. Without that play tonight I don’t know what the score would be.”
Anderson gave the Cougars an early 14-0 lead with two first-half touchdown runs.
Hilmar (5-1 overall, 1-1 TVL) cut the lead in half just before the end of the second quarter after Cole Bailey picked off a Davis pass and returned the ball to the Escalon 11-yard line.
Three plays later, Seth Miguel found Justin Barros in the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown to cut the lead to 14-7 with 3:57 left in the first half.
“They had a great game plan,” said Hilmar coach Frank Marques. “We just made too many mistakes tonight. I really believe we’re a good enough team that we can control our own destiny, but it was just too many mistakes tonight. They were the better team tonight. I’d love to get a chance to play them again.”
The Cougars went almost exclusively to their ground game in the second half and racked up 199 yards as they pulled away for the win. Panero contributed 124 yards rushing in the second half.
“All our running backs ran hard,” Beam said. “It was just (Panero’s) night. Two weeks ago it was Christensen and Luke’s night. Tonight it was Panero. We have a three-headed monster and tonight the third one came out tonight.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2019 at 11:39 PM with the headline "After two season-ending losses, Escalon finally gets payback against Hilmar.."
