By Ed Piper
Viking head coach Tyler Roach basically patted his players on the back after their scrimmage against Oceanside Fri., March 12, after a long, COVID-induced start-stop-start-again pattern of frustration over the past year of cancelled spring and summer football, then postponed fall season.
"Good job," the fourth-year coach, who never imagined a season like this one when he took the La Jolla job, said to his assembled troops, each player down on one knee in the southern end zone at Edwards Stadium after a 14-7 loss on the scoreboard. It was a chilly night, but what seemed most important to players was that they were playing another team again after a seven-month delay to their traditional opener in mid-August.
In fact, it was a sheer wonder that the Vikings were playing a season at all. It will consist for them of only five games.
During the practice game against the Pirates, Roach went off at one point after his quarterback, Jackson Stratton, threw a second interception. "Wake up!" the head coach screamed. "Make the read." This was shades of the assistant coach who could do stuff like that five years ago when it wasn't really his program.
But now, with Roach, subsequently hired as head coach, having engineered a renaissance of the Viking football program culminating in a Division 4 CIF San Diego Section championship in 2019, their most recent season, and a Division 3 Southern California championship, represented by the faux jewel-encrusted ring each player received the same year, Tyler has carved out a different role. He doesn't just pop off with his players.
On Friday night, this was evident in his pregame talk to both teams about the difficult year they had experienced, and the challenges they had faced with school closed to in-class instruction due to COVID, sports events cancelled, and social injustice rearing its ugly head last summer in protests and demonstrations across the land.
His words seemed even more of the "encourager" type to his own players after the four-quarter scrimmage, played with a running clock during the fourth quarter as both coaches evidently had seen enough and wanted to close things up quickly. After opening kickoff at 6:58 p.m. by the Pirates to the home team, the contest ended at 8:34 p.m.--pretty quick by normal game standards.
Before the game, Viking players busied themselves with a familiar ritual they haven't done in a while on the lower (softball) field behind the visitors stands, getting dressed in their game uniforms for the night's contest. The outside dress was necessitated by continuing COVID restrictions, which may let up this week as case numbers continue plummeting from late November. Fewer cases seem to be happening, and more adults are getting one of the three vaccines.
Viking players talked of their "brothers" and helped one another adjust shoulder pad straps after a short line filed up to the trainer's room for pregame taping of ankles and bumped hands and other body parts.
Stratton, who said he had grown an inch or more since the CIF title season, when he was a raw sophomore--"I'm now the tallest in my family"--showed some joie de vivre as he launched several long pass attempts into the atmosphere during the scrimmage toward receivers Max Raulston, Devin Bale, Diego Solis, and others.
Raulston can still sky, leaping high just inside the left sideline for a Stratton missile with just over three minutes remaining in the first half, Oceanside leading 7-0 since their first drive in the first quarter. Instead of Raulston capturing that pass, his defender came away with the ball for an incomplete.
Asked about that play later, Max said, "I know," acknowledging he leaped high for the ball. He couldn't explain how his Pirate defender ripped the ball away.
With his evident athletic abilities, Raulston decided a year ago to concentrate only on football, and leave basketball behind. The decision paid off, with the Vikings' title success in a championship season. By the way, as was mentioned by public address during the scrimmage, Roach was named Coach of the Year for his efforts last year.
Jackson did connect with Raulston late in the third quarter for an 11-yard completion. Raulston's catch set up Martin Jellison's run from the Oceanside four-yard line to score the hosts' only touchdown of the effort.
Max's catch was just inside the left sideline as the Vikings' offense drove toward the south end zone.
On the night, unofficially, Stratton completed six of 12 passes, with two interceptions.
Some of the La Jolla firepower came on Max Smith's runs. He had five carries, unofficially, covering 20 or more yards in total.
Some of the walking wounded at the scrimmage included junior receiver Makai Smith, senior receiver Luke Brunette, senior defensive end Dirk Germon, and junior receiver Mason Powers. Powers said his knee injury may be less than season-killing. He had yet to have an MRI taken.
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