Another long day for Cougars in 60-0 loss Brian Sumpter Record-Bee sports editor UPPER LAKE – The reality of the situation is that the Upper Lake Cougars have 15 players left in uniform and they need all 15 working together if they’re going to avoid what happened to them again on Saturday against California School for the Deaf of Fremont. “CSD came ready to play the game. Their players wanted the win and played like they wanted to win,” Upper Lake coach Alex Stabiner said. “Our guys figured out in the first few plays that CSD wanted it more. Our guys didn’t.” The Eagles jumped out to a 13-0 lead in the first quarter and never looked back, rolling to a 60-0 victory in the North Central League II game. While CSD evened its league mark at 1-1, Upper Lake dropped its league opener and is now 0-4 on the season, having been outscored 228-28 in those four games. The momentum the Cougars – and Stabiner – thought they had after playing about two quarters of solid football in a 40-14 loss to Lower Lake the previous weekend evaporated almost as soon as the Eagles scored on each of their first two possessions – touchdown runs of 1 yard by Tristan Boren and 3 yards by Adam Wemmer. “It looked like we started to put it a little bit together against Lower Lake, but we took a couple of steps back today.” Most troubling of all for Stabiner was the demeanor of a handful of his players. While some played with enthusiasm down to the last snap such as Nicholas Stith, who picked up 10 yards on a fourth-quarter run for only the second Cougar first down of the game, others look disinterested … at best. There were even a few squabbles between Upper Lake players during the game. “As a coach it does hurt,” Stabiner said. “When they’re not giving their all, it hurts. If we had played our hearts out today and lost, I wouldn’t feel that way and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.” As has been a problem all season, the Cougars repeatedly hurt themselves with penalties and multiple turnovers. Three fumbles lost, all in the first half, led to CSD touchdowns each time, and an interception thrown by Mike DiAndrea was returned 45 yards for a touchdown by Jax Pedersen in the second quarter. CSD rolled out 34 points in the second quarter to turn the contest into a full-fledged rout. In addition to his interception return, Pedersen scored on a 30-yard run on the first play of the quarter and his 5-yard touchdown reception with 3:10 left made it 47-0. The Eagles’ other scores in the second quarter came on Adam Wemmer’s 69-yard run and quarterback Zane Pedersen’s 29-yard touchdown pass to Connor Baer. With the game played under a running clock in the second half, the Eagles picked up one touchdown in each of the final two quarters – a 34-yard screen pass from Zane Pedersen to Bemnet Tesfasilasie in the third quarter and a 1-yard run by Johnny Morales in the fourth quarter. Upper Lake managed just 24 yards of total offense and two first downs, one by penalty. Gabe Anderson’s 10 carries for 17 yards led the Cougars, who didn’t complete a pass – at least not to one of their own players. Wemmer’s 128 yards on only nine carries led CSD (1-1, 2-3). Zane Pedersen completed 7 of 12 passes for 121 yards and three touchdowns. After being home for each of their first four games, the Cougars hit the road Friday night to play Stellar Prep of Hayward. The varsity game is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. as there will be no junior varsity game.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 01:40:44 +0000
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