GALT, LIBERTY RANCH FACE OFF IN THURSDAY GAME
The Hawks went out with style.
The Liberty Ranch football team finished its short spring football season with a 30-16 victory over cross-town rival Galt on Thursday, and in doing so notched its only victory of the season.
“So glad we could end it that way,” Liberty Ranch coach Anthony Linebaugh said. “We’re done. And everything had to go right to get these games in with the tests and everything. I know other places are going to play for another couple of weeks, but we needed this break, and the kids can go off and play other sports.”
A Galt score in the second half brought the Warriors to within one score at 22-16, but the Hawks responded with a fumble recovery for a short field, and a touchdown. After a Galt drive stalled, Liberty Ranch took over with about six minutes remaining and ground out the clock.
At halftime, the Hawks led 148 after the teams traded touchdowns in the last minute of the half.
Gabriel Simoes-Ojeda led the Hawks with three touchdowns, all on the ground, and Tony Rangel added another on a hitch pass.
Linebaugh pointed to solid play by Derrion Robinson and
Tyler Johnson, and pointed to a Max Adversalo fumble recovery that led to a key touchdown.
“I’m so glad for theses seniors, for this team, and that’s the word I would use, excitement, appreciation, a lot of smiles,” Linebaugh said. “We needed that. We had a couple of cramps, had one young man hurt his foot. It was gritty team win.”
While Liberty Ranch (1-3) is done until the fall, Galt (0-3) still has one game on the schedule, an April 9 matchup against
El Dorado, rescheduled from the start of the season due to COVID-19 cases.
Tokay vs. Linden
The Tigers, after getting blasted by Lincoln to the tune of 72-6 last week, takes on a 1-1 Linden squad that took down Big Valley Christian 34-6 after a 30-14 opening loss to Lodi. One player in particular stood out to Tokay coach Michael Holst from watching film.
“They have a running back who’s a stud, (James Sherman Jr.), definitely gifted, who ran for a bunch of yards last week and scored twice against Lodi,” Holst said. “Obviously you want to limit him. He does a good job keeping plays alive that aren’t there.”
Holst said the Tokay players have bounced back well from last week’s loss, during which Lincoln seemed able to score at will.
“They’ve been great, I don’t think you could have noticed a difference. They’ve been awesome the whole year,” Holst said. “Not that it’s perfect, but their level of engagement has been great all year. They understood, you know, Lincoln gave it to us, they have some great players, but that was last week and this is this week. You have to move on.”
Lodi at Tracy
After facing Linden and West, the Flames stand with a 2-0 record for the second season in a row. But this is where the schedule gets significantly harder, even though the opponent is 0-2 Tracy.
“Look at the teams they've played: Lincoln and St. Mary’s,” Lodi coach George Duenas said. “They'll be fundamentaly strong, and they run the triple option pretty well.”
Both Lodi and Tokay had their COVID-19 tests completed by late Thursday, and wer good to go against their opponents.
“I think they're pretty excited. They're really excited for tomorrow's game, because last year, we let that one slip away,” Duenas said. “We've had a great week of practice, one of our cleaner and less sloppy practices of the year. They look pretty good.”