Antelope football the talk of Wellton with Rams in playoff hunt
Tonight’s game will be the biggest for the Antelope football program in a decade, but it comes against the Rams’ toughest opponent to date.
The Rams (6-2 AIA, 3-0 region) will have a chance to clinch a 2A Salt region championship when they visit North Pointe Prep (7-1, 3-0).
Both teams are perfect in region play, and the game will serve as the winner’s ticket into the state playoffs.
Antelope has used this week to remember and bring back some of the traditions of a program that spent the better part of the two decades prior to this one winning football games.
“It’s just fun to come in and talk about traditions that some of the ex-players and coaches have gone through,” Antelope coach Gary Mauldin said. “Most of these players are close (to the program). Their fathers, older brothers and grandfathers played here. It’s a rich rural tradition.”
On Tuesday the team went into the gym as they pulled out all of the old football banners as the members of the coaching staff who played for the Rams spoke, and on Wednesday former coach John Blabe came in to speak, while Antelope Class of 1976 graduate Mike Jorajuria spoke to the players as well.
“Mike J was talking about the renewed talking of football in restaurants in town,” Mauldin said. “People get together and talk about Antelope football now. I just think it’s really good.”
Blabe was the coach during the Rams’ last playoff appearance.
Antelope hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2008, and this is the program’s first winning season since 2009.
The Rams had a streak of making the playoffs in 17 out of 18 seasons spanning from 1991 to 2008. The senior class at Antelope has been through a lot to get to this point. Three years ago the varsity team was winless.
So far this season Antelope has prided itself on the defensive side of the ball. The Rams have three shutouts this season and had a shutout streak of 15 quarters snapped last week, but getting a shutout may be a little tougher this week.
North Pointe averages just over 62 points per game and almost all of that comes on the ground. The Falcons average 420 rushing yards per game and 178 of those come from senior running back Joe Soriano-Garfias, who has 27 touchdowns. As a team, the Falcons have 60 rushing touchdowns.
The Falcons have only thrown the ball seven times in eight games.
While it is going to try and run the ball, North Pointe will run an offense out of the leather helmet era. They will come out of the double-wing, with a fullback and short splits on the offensive line.
They don’t have a vast playbook, but what they do run, they run well. Mauldin says that they will see plenty of counters, dives, veers (or as he calls criss-cross) and the occasional pass.
Antelope is moving some players around this week to prepare for the personnel. They are bringing one cornerback into linebacker and another one will be subbed out for an extra defensive lineman.
“We’re going to run a sixfront and we put some pretty big fellas up front. They are going to go big-on-big,” Mauldin said.
The two teams have two common opponents and similar scorelines between the games. Antelope beat Scottsdale Prep (34-7) and Valley Lutheran (58-0), and the Falcons beat the former 52-14 and the latter 68-0.
The game will be the first meeting in school history for the two programs. North Pointe Prep has never been to the playoffs.
Both teams still have a region game next week but even if they would lose that game, then they would hold the tiebreaker.