SAN JOSE — Valley Christian initially got some attention across the Bay Area after its stunning 47-7 homecoming win over Archbishop Mitty.
The Warriors should have everybody’s attention after Friday night. Facing off against an Archbishop Riordan, a team ranked No. 6 in the Bay Area News Group Top 25, No. 10 VC jumped out to an early lead and pulled away late, easily holding off the visiting Crusaders 31-13 on the hill in San Jose.
“It was great,” said Valley Christian coach Mike Machado afterward. “It was a great performance, really exciting.”
VC is now 3-0 in West Catholic Athletic League play, averaging a 26.3-point margin of victory. So are the Warriors contenders to win the WCAL this year?
Valley Christian’s Marcel Leggett (8) runs with the ball against Archbishop Mitty in the second quarter at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
“I’d say it’s high chances now,” said junior Colton Hider, who had a pick-six and a sack for VC. “I feel like that was a good team, basically a college O-line right there in size. I feel like we can take down any O-line with our D-line if we just play as a team. Keep on forcing turnovers, stopping the ball.”
Valley Christian (4-2, 3-0 WCAL) took the initial lead with a 24-yard field goal by Aaron Vanderveen, but Riordan (2-4, 1-2 WCAL) responded with a 33-yard touchdown pass from Mike Mitchell Jr. to Chris Lawson.
It was pretty much all Warriors after that. VC answered the bell with a 15-play drive that ended with a 5-yard TD pass from Rome Leota-Pritchard to La’Savion Carr.
Valley Christian starting quarterback Rome Leota-Pritchard (3) throws against Archbishop Mitty in the first quarter at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Valley Christian’s next scoring drive was much quicker. On the first play from scrimmage of the second half, Marcel Leggett ran 75 yards up the middle to put the Warriors up 17-7.
Then, VC’s defense, which had already forced two turnovers, really made its mark. With Riordan pinned well inside its own territory after a punt, Hider snatched Mitchell’s errant pass and ran it back 20 yards for a touchdown.
He had some help from defensive lineman Champ Taulealea during the play.
“The quarterback threw it up. I blocked it,” Hider recalled. “It hit off of Champ. Champ just like tossed it to me. I grabbed it, realized it in my head. I just ran. Got in the end zone, thankfully.”
Archbishop Mitty’s Lazaro Faraj-Washington (4) is tackled by Valley Christian’s Jordan Vargas (21) and Trevor Gorshe (41) in the second quarter at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Valley Christian had one more dramatic scoring play up its sleeve. To put the game away after a fourth-down stop inside Riordan territory, Leota-Pritchard found King Wade for a diving 25-yard touchdown catch in the corner of the end zone, giving the Warriors a 31-7 lead.
“It was one of the things we talked about all week. The best defense is an offense that’s on the field for you,” Machado said. “And so we challenged our offense to be able to score in the 30s, which you figure you need to do to play a team like Riordan, and still possess the ball.
“They did both of those things. They took care of the ball for the most part and converted third downs. So the offense was a huge part of our defensive success and vice versa. We turned them over a couple times and got the ball in good field position as well.”
Riordan added a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, a 2-yard run by Adonyae Brown.
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For Riordan, the defeat was another disappointment in WCAL play one week after losing a 21-0 lead at St. Ignatius. Coach Adhir Ravipati was introspective after the game, noting that the Crusaders would have to go back to the drawing board in some respects.
“We’ve hit a little bit of a rock bottom,” Ravipati said. “And we have a choice of we can fight together and keep throwing punches, or we can quit. I know we got a group that’s going to fight. I told them, in the end, you look at a scoreboard like that, that’s on me. That’s on me as their head coach. We weren’t ready to play.”
But the celebration was on at Valley Christian, and it looks like it might not be stopping anytime soon.
“This is Valley Christian football,” Machado said. “That’s one of the other things we talked about all week, is we want to play Valley Christian football, which is possess the ball, make big plays on offense and don’t let them score. We’ve been doing that for a long time here, and it was nice to see us be able to do that in front of our home crowd.”