Blue Devils open with difficult loss
Flashes of brilliance fail to make up for errors by Sunnyside
By Patrick Finley
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.06.2008

The cartoon devil was missing from Sunnyside High School's helmets in their season opener Friday night against Glendale Mountain Ridge. The team took the field with plain royal blue helmets, and left feeling just plain blue.

Last year's Class 5A-II semifinalists fell to the pass-happy Mountain Lions 14-5 on Friday night at Sunnyside.

"The company just screwed up," Sunnyside coach Richard Sanchez said. "Evidently they needed four weeks to get it done with us."

They should be ready for the team's second game.

"I don't even know if we've earned the right to put them on," Sanchez said. The Blue Devils showed their inexperience with bursts of brilliance offset by one mistake after another. The Blue Devils were whistled for penalties, dropped passes and failed to finish many different offensive drives in Mountain Lions territory.

"We came up empty; we can't do that," Sanchez said. "We had dropped balls. We didn't play as well as we should have. We made some mistakes."

The game started fortuitously enough. On the second play of the game, Mountain Ridge quarterback Kevin Yost watched as a shotgun snap sailed over his head and into the end zone. He scrambled back, fell on the ball and was whistled for a safety.

The Blue Devils ran only four plays before punting. Yost put his team back on track, driving down the field to take a 7-2 lead.

The Mountain Lions did it with a bit of trickery. Yost threw a lateral to wide receiver Travis Hutchinson, who stopped and tossed the ball 14 yards straight in front of him to Cody Wollschlager, who was standing in the end zone.

"Great play call," Yost said. "When that corner came up, I knew it was going (for a touchdown) right after I threw it."

Sunnyside quarterback Jesus Vega, a transfer from Cholla, at times picked apart Mountain Ridge's zone defense, making better reads than his counterpart.

But Vega made one inexcusable mistake, throwing an interception to Calvin Martin with less than 30 seconds in the first half and his team down 7-5. The ball was at the 12-yard line, and the Blue Devils were all but guaranteed a field goal opportunity.

Instead, Sunnyside went into the locker room behind.

"I was hoping we could come out and put a score on the board and at least get three out of it" in the second half, Sanchez said.

It did not happen.

The Blue Devils ran three plays before punting, and watched as the Mountain Lions chewed up about nine minutes of clock in a touchdown drive.

Yost converted two fourth downs before scoring on a 1-yard dive to take a 14-5 lead.

After a stellar kick return got Sunnyside to midfield, Vega threw an interception to Michael Chocholousek near the end of the third quarter and essentially put the game out of reach.

Sunnyside senior Manny Aguilar, who gained 352 yards last year as a backup running back, tried to match that total in one night. The bruiser plowed for 122 yards on 20 carries, adding 15 yards in receptions.

Vega finished with 117 yards on 11-of-23 passing; Yost was 15 of 25 for 101 yards.