The Whiteface Antelopes earned a Homecoming win in their football game against Springlake-Earth this past Friday, winning 82-48.
The shootout win makes it two-in-a-row for the Antelopes and moves them to 4-2 this season.
The win wasn’t exactly easy, but Head Coach Brandon Flores wasn’t surprised by that.
“Springlake-Earth’s always a tough game. It doesn’t matter what the records have been or who’s playing, or who’s graduated. That’s always been a really, really good game between both teams,” Coach Flores said. “I thought our offense was phenomenal today. The offense came out firing on all cylinders. Defensively, we had to make a lot of adjustments and put guys kind of out of position, and it took us a little while. We finally made some adjustments and were able to finish that one off.”
Firing on all cylinders may not even do the Antelopes offensive performance justice as they had 498 yards of total offense.
Primarily, the success came in the rushing attack as 452 of those yards were on the ground.
“We take pride in running the football downhill and being a hat on a hat and playing physical,” Coach Flores said. “Our guys did a great job of moving that line of scrimmage, and Jaxon Hodge, Cash Crutcher, Luke Gresham and Jose Flores, those guys hit the holes so fast. If we can just give those guys a small window, they’re going to take it and run with it. It starts up front with those o-line guys.”
Junior Jaxon Hodge led the Antelopes with 203 rushing yards and four touchdowns on 11 carries, while senior Cash Crutcher was also stellar with 116 rushing yards and two touchdowns on eight carries.
The sophomore duo of Luke Gresham and Jose Flores joined in on the success too, as Gresham had five carries for 55 yards and a touchdown and Flores had five carries for 41 yards and two touchdowns.
And while the passing attack wasn’t a necessity, the Antelopes were still successful in their limited attempts as senior Victor Borunda completed two of six passes for 46 yards, two touchdowns and an interception.
On the receiving end of those passing touchdowns were junior Isaak Soliz, who had that lone reception for a 27-yard touchdown, and Jaxon Hodge added onto his rushing performance with a 19yard receiving touchdown.
Whiteface also put on a great special teams performance against Springlake-Earth as the play of the night was likely an onside kick that they recovered with an acrobatic play.
They did struggle on PAT kicks, but that’s a common occurrence in high school football.
“Some of those missed PATs were just our kicker not following through and lifting his head,” Coach Flores said. “We always talk about how we’ve got to steal a possession on kickoff, and we did that exactly. We tell the guys, that shifts momentum our way and they got it done and just kept rolling with it.”
They not only succeeded in stealing that possession, but also on kickoff return as senior Cash Crutcher had four returns for 132 yards.
With all the success between the offense and special teams the Antelopes were bound to win, but the defense had its struggles in the game.
The Antelopes defense surrendered 439 yards of total offense to SLE with 95% of that coming from their quarterback, Froylan Agundiz, who was also responsible for all seven of their touchdowns.
For most of the night Whiteface couldn’t keep Agundiz from extending plays, which resulted in several huge runs and long passing touchdowns.
That lasted until late in the third quarter when the defense began to really figure things out.
“We thought we had a good game plan from the get-go. Our big thing is we just weren’t coming to balance and bringing down on tackles. We kept trying to shoot and making big tackles instead of just making the tackle,” Coach Flores said. “At halftime, we told our guys, once you get number two [Agundiz] in front of you, you’ve just got to break down and be able to secure that tackle. I think we did that. We cleaned up and made some adjustments on our coverage on the back end and that helped us a lot.”
It’s hard to execute a game plan when a team is lacking fundamentals, which is what led to most of SLE’s points.
The Antelopes did adjust and get back to the basics, but they’ll look to do that from the start moving forward.
But even in their struggles, Whiteface still forced two turnovers, one was a fumble that sophomore Alex Hernandez took for a defensive touchdown, and the other was an interception by Victor Borunda.
The Antelopes win wasn’t perfect, but they did a lot of great things in the game, which the packedout Homecoming crowd definitely appreciated.
Whiteface has a bye week next, which Coach Flores noted was much needed as he has several players banged up.
They’ll use this week to recover before heading on the road to face Wellman-Union on Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m.