Bulldogs revel in section championship win

SACRAMENTO — It was everything the Vacaville high football players were hoping for.

And perhaps a little bit more.

It was also everything a championship game should be.

Saturday night’s Sac-Joaquin Section Division II championship win over Folsom brought the Bulldogs their second section title in five years and sent the seniors out on a high note.

Making it that much more special for the players was the fact that the 39-35 win came over defending state champion Folsom, which dealt Vacaville a 75-6 thrashing in the second round of the 2010 SJS playoffs.

The fourth-seeded Bulldogs (13-1) did it with a gutsy effort that took every player on the field to accomplish. Vacaville also finished the season on a 13-game win streak following a season-opening loss to Marin Catholic.

For the seniors especially, it was a dream come true. They came to Vacaville two years after the last section title win, which came in 2006.

Fullback Melvin Mason, who rushed for 111 yards and a pair of touchdowns Saturday night, including the game-winner, was elated.

“This means everything to me. I’ve dreamed about this ever since I came, when I was a freshman in high school,” the teary eyed Mason said. “This is the life experience that any high school football player should get.”

But just as the players ahead of him shared their experience, Mason knows it’s his duty to pass this on.

“So now that I got to experience it, now I can pass it on to the kids growing up (and say) ‘You just gotta work hard for what you want, and if you work hard and put all your heart into it, it will come out.’ ”

As vital as Mason and the offense were, it was the defense, and particularly its efforts in the second half that won the game for Vacaville.

Folsom quarterback Tanner Trosin came into the game having thrown for 4,778 yards on the season, and he added 407 on to his now state-record total Saturday.

However, 300 of those came before halftime and 99 were on a single TD pass.

The Vacaville defense held him to 107 yards in the air in the final 24 minutes, and defensive back Jacob Te’o intercepted him twice in the second half.

“(Te’o) was phenomenal. He grew up a lot this year as a junior. We forced him to do things all year long that he’s not had to do discipline-wise,” said Vacaville coach Mike Papadopoulos. “And against the best quarterback in the state, some of the best receivers in the state, for those kids to do what they did in the second half — tremendous effort.”

The defense as a whole was fantastic, Papadopoulos added.

“The things happening to us in the first half, we did to ourselves,” Papadopoulos said.  “We gave them too much respect and we asked our defensive backs to start challenging them and we started to put heat on them.”

Once that pressure was applied, Folsom started to panic and play right into Vacaville’s hands, giving up a handful of late penalties and missing balls on offense.

That fueled Vacaville’s confidence and the stellar comeback that led to two unanswered touchdowns to take the lead.

“Our kids just have so much resolve in them . . . this has been a year-long project that that’s forced us to look at (everything from) the smallest thing that we do on our program to the thing we hang our hat on — this is the byproduct of all that work,” Papadopoulos said. “The kids, I could not be more proud of the things that they’ve done and the life lesson that they learned today. Just in hanging in there.”

Things finally started to look up for Vacaville when Mason scored his second touchdown to go up 39-35 with about five minutes to play.

“I just thought, ‘We just play defense and the game will be over,’ ” he said. “ When I scored the last touchdown, the only people I could thank was God and the linemen.”

Tackle Johnny Schupp was one of those linemen.

Also a senior, Schupp was ecstatic with the win in which he recorded seven tackles and a crucial second-half sack of Trosin.

“There’s pictures on the wall in our school and they’re above the gym, and it’s a dream to be up there,” Schupp said of the photos commemorating the school’s championship teams. “And now we’re gonna be up there for a long time — for a long time.”

He said the win didn’t come easy. In fact it took its toll with at least three Vacaville starters leaving the game with injuries.

“That was probably one of the toughest games I’ve played in my entire life,” Schupp said.

Adding to the difficulty of the game, Vacaville trailed 28-20 at the half, and went down by two scores late in the third quarter.

“We were down at halftime, everyone was just down, and then we came back out,” Schupp said, crediting the halftime talk for the comeback. “I think it was the locker room talk, definitely. We had a good talk in the locker room. Everyone was really, really down and, you know, a few of the captains stepped up. I stepped up, and I said ‘Pick your heads up. We’re down. We’ve been here before. We’ve been in that situation with good teams before and we’ve come (out) on top.”

Whatever was said by the others in the locker room, it clearly worked.

“It’s just a dream. I’ve dreamed about it since I was a little kid, and now it’s finally come true,” Schupp said of bringing home the blue banner. “(It was a) team effort, definitely. We had a great group of guys, and I’m never gonna forget them. I love every single one of them.”

For some Bulldogs players the game erased a year-old ghost that had dogged them all season.

“This win means the world to me, to us. This is revenge and it’s so sweet,” proclaimed wide receiver Terrance Trueblood, who spent most of his time running the ball Saturday. “And it’s so great because (Folsom) ran up the score (last year) and made us who we are today. They made us who we are today and that’s all I can say.”

For Papadopoulos, the fact that the title came at Folsom’s expense didn’t carry too much weight.

“It didn’t matter who was lining up here tonight. We try to control the things we can control on our side,” he said. “Did it help? That was kind of a neat part. They’re a very classy program, and the right two teams were here tonight playing in this game. I honestly believe that. So that was the part that was most special for me. The right two teams were here playing in this and the type of game it turned out to be was what a championship game should be.”

Reach Mike Corpos at 427-6979, or mcorpos@dailyepublic.net.

Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=114043

Posted by Mike Corpos on Dec 4 2011.

Filed under High school, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry