Escalon runs to win over Bret Harte, will run again Tuesday

Escalon’s Mark Loureiro, now in his 27^th season as the school’s head football coach, is decidedly old school, and that’s probably bad news for the Cougars a day after their 63-21 victory over Bret Harte at Lloyd Engel Field.

Monday night’s game originally was scheduled to be played in Angels Camp, but the Butte fire forced a change of venue. Last Friday, it was decided that the game would be moved to Escalon and delayed until Monday.

That means the Cougars have just four days to recover before they travel to Galt to take on Liberty Ranch. And Loureiro has old-school theories on how to best help his charges recover.

“I’m going to run ’em (Tuesday) at practice,” said Loureiro, after putting the wraps on his 267^th career victory, most in Sac-Joaquin Section history. “They’re going to hate me, but I’ve got to run all that soreness out of them. Then we’ll go hard on Wednesday, have a light run-through on Thursday and go play Friday.

“Hey, the pros do it. They go Sunday and Thursday on occasion.”

The Cougars, at times, probably looked like a professional outfit to the Bullfrogs, who were overmatched from the start.

The Bret Harte players had not practiced in several days and undoubtedly had other things on their minds coming into the game.

“We were missing four running backs, two inside linebackers and our defensive coordinator to fire-related issues,” said quarterback Michael Ziehlke, who had a bag of ice strapped to his left (non-throwing) shoulder after suffering a dislocation late in the contest. “We were a little rattled at the start. I think our first three drives were three-and-out. But we settled down after a while and just played football.”

The Cougars took advantage and scored on their first three possessions, getting two short TD runs from Tyler Swinford and another from Hunter Calton.

But Bret Harte fought to within 28-14 midway though the second quarter. Escalon could never fully relax until C.J. Gumbs broke the game open with an 84-yard kickoff return that made it 49-21 midway through the third quarter.

It was Gumbs’ second score of the contest. He got around the end on a sweep play in the second quarter and then made a nice cutback against the grain to complete a 27-yard TD run that made it 28-7. He very nearly had a third TD, taking the second-half kickoff 58-yards before being pushed out of bounds at the 21.

Gumbs was one of 10 Escalon backs to carry the ball in the game as the Cougars rolled up 313 yards on the ground. Quarterback Dylan Azevedo was an efficient 4-of-5 for 78 yards and one TD pass, a 19-yard strike to Chris Pilcher that made it 35-14 just before halftime.

In addition to Gumbs’ kickoff return, the Cougars got second-half TDs from Tim Costa (12 yards), Julio Mendoza (15 yards) and David Martinez on a zig-zagging 75-yard run from David Martinez, who had no time to catch his breath as he lined up and drilled his ninth extra point of the game.

Ziehlke scored on a pair of short TD runs for the Bullfrogs in the first half and Cody Kubiak burst up the middle and outraced the Escalon defense 64 yards to the end zone for Bret Harte’s lone second-half tally.

“I thought we lost our edge a little bit defensively, tonight,” said Louriero, walking and talking as he headed to the Cougars’ locker room. “This was a wake-up call for our defense, especially if we’re going to compete in the (Trans-Valley League).

“But I want to say this,” added Lourerio, stopping in the east zone to make his final point. “Bret Harte High School and that whole community can be real proud of those kids.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 9:41 AM with the headline "Escalon runs to win over Bret Harte, will run again Tuesday."