STERLING - When a football team scores touchdowns on offense, defense and special teams, it’s probably going to be a good day.
That’s what Sterling Newman did against Mendota, and yes, it was a good day for the Comets as they cruised to a 42-0 victory over the Trojans in a Three Rivers Conference crossover game on Sept. 7 at Roscoe Eades Stadium on the campus of Sterling High School.
The game was nearly a mirror of last year’s contest between the two teams when Newman won, 50-0. In that matchup, the Trojans had all kinds of trouble moving the ball on offense and stopping the Comets when on defense. Mendota (0-2) ran 43 plays from scrimmage and gained 33 yards in 2023. In this year’s game, the Trojans ran 38 plays on offense and picked up only 46 total yards, while Newman generated 294 yards in 46 plays.
It was Newman’s defense and special teams that got it off and running this time when it zoomed out to a 20-0 lead in the first quarter. After each team exchanged punts to start the contest, Mendota took over at its own 21-yard line for its second offensive series. Just under two minutes into the possession, Comet linebacker Daniel Kelly stepped in front of an Aden Tillman pass and picked it off, returning the pilfer 26 yards for a touchdown. Ayden Gutierrez’s point-after kick was no good.
Mendota was forced to punt the ball back to Newman on its third offensive possession, and the Comets’ Cody McBride weaved his way through would-be Trojan tacklers until he found himself in the end zone 40 yards later to put the Comets up 12-0. The PAT kick failed.
Newman tacked on one more touchdown before the first quarter expired. Starting at the Trojan 38 after another Mendota punt, an 18-yard run to the end zone by Briar Ivey was nullified because of a holding penalty on the Comets, but it didn’t matter, as on the same drive, Brady Williamson scored on an 8-yard run followed by a McBride two-point run, and Newman led 20-0.
After another Mendota possession stalled, a Braiden Freeman punt landed in the hands of McBride, who returned it 27 yards to the Trojan 28-yard line. Moments later, the Comets were back in the end zone, this time on an 8-yard TD pass from Evan Bushman to Joseph Oswalt at the 8:42 mark of the second stanza. The extra-point kick failed to connect and it was 26-0.
On Mendota’s ensuing possession, it put together its best drive of the game, advancing the ball to the Comet 33-yard line. But a fourth-down run came up short of the first down marker and Newman took over with 4:54 left in the half.
The Comets were able to add one more score before intermission when they marched 67 yards in 15 plays, culminated by a 1-yard dive into the end zone by Bushman with 22 seconds left. Ivey’s two-point conversion run was good.
The running clock kicked in just under three minutes into the second half when Newman’s McBride scored on a 13-yard run to cap off a seven-play, 56-yard drive. Kelly gathered in the two-point conversion pass from Bushman to make it 42-0.
