“There is no folding here. We’re Santa Barbara High School. We’ve got pride. We’re going to keep building this program.”
Santa Barbara High football coach Jaime Melgoza let it be known after Friday night’s 41-0 Channel League loss to Buena that his players and coaching staff will continue working hard to earn their first win of the season.
“We got to keep our pride. We’ve got to continue coming out here,” he said. “We’ve got two games left. We can go ahead and quit now, but I know for a fact we got a lot of guys out there (who aren’t quitters). I told our seniors that this is all about taking pride now.”
The Dons ran up against a solid and confident Buena squad, which just a few years ago was a struggling program. Bulldogs coach Cliff Farrar pointed out Friday night’s result marked the first time since 2003 that they had won two games in Channel League play.
Buena (6-2, 2-1) was firing on all cylinders at Peabody Stadium.
On offense, quarterback Robert Munoz threw for three touchdowns, running back Kendrick Mathis ran for two and kicker Drew Jacobs blasted two long field goals. At the defensive end, Tyler Perry led a punishing attack, holding Santa Barbara to 53 total yards.
“We were just clicking tonight,” said Perry. “Everybody, whether it was the first string, second or even the third string, was doing their jobs. We just practiced hard this week and it paid off.”
The dominating performance showed that the Bulldogs (6-2, 2-1) were not feeling down after last week’s tough loss to St. Bonaventure.
“We were disappointed because we knew we could win that game and we still believe we could have won that game,” Perry said, “We’re not down on ourselves, we’re just looking forward to the playoffs and getting another shot at them.”
The Bulldogs got rolling early with Munoz directing an 80-yard drive for a touchdown on their first possession of the game. Munoz used short passes that Matt Arve turned into long gains and a 26-yard scramble to set up Mathis for a 10-yard scoring run with 9:42 left in the first quarter.
Arve caught six passes on the night for 87 yards and Munoz completed 12 of 16 passes for 209 yards.
“Robert is doing a good job making reads,” Farrar said. “We ran a guy in motion early and no one covered him. I just thought Matt Arve played a really fine first half for us.”
Buena capitalized on a bad punt snap by Santa Barbara and the subsequent punt that went negative 12 yards and got the ball at the Dons’ 36. The Bulldogs couldn’t get anything going, but they still came away with points when Jacobs easily nailed a 46-yard field goal with 17 seconds left in the quarter
He made a 42-yarder in the fourth quarter.
“Drew is kicking like crazy,” Farrar said. “He’s doing is a nice job. His priority is he’s our No. 1 pitcher on the baseball team, but I told him that I didn’t care what he did as long as he kicked for us.”
The Bulldogs went to the air for their next three scores in the second quarter. Munoz hit Perry for a 31-yard touchdown strike and Leiser on plays of 10 and 55 yards. Leiser’s first score came after an interception by Arve.
Leiser had four catches for 104 yards.
Besides rolling up the points in the first half, the Bulldogs put some stinging hits on Santa Barbara ball carriers. In fact, they knocked out quarterback RJ Rosborough as he scrambled for yardage.
“You get banged up then you lose a guy like RJ and it gets tougher every day,” Melgoza said.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Dons. Next week they travel to St. Bonaventure.
“Sometimes you got to take your lumps and you’ve got to deal with things like this,” Melgoza said. “This is going to happen in life. It’s easy to quit, but I don’t think any of these kids are going to quit.
“We’re going to get ourselves prepare for Bonnie and move on.”
BUENA 41, SANTA BARBARA 0
Buena…10 21 7 3— 41
Santa Barbara…0 0 0 0 — 0
First quarter
B — Mathis 10 run, Jacobs kick, 9:42
B — FG 46, Jacobs, :13
Second quarter
B — Perry 31 pass from Munoz, Jacobs kick, 8:56
B — Leiser 10 pass from Munoz, Jacobs kick, 6:26
B — Leiser 55 pass from Munoz, Jacobs kick, :37
Third quarter
B — Mathis 5 run, Jacobs kick, 7:45
Fourth quarter
B — FG 42, Jacobs, 8:34
TEAM TOTALS B SB
First Downs…16, 5
Rushes-yards…30-156, 28-27
Passing yards…209, 26
Total yards…365, 53
Passes…12-17-0, 7-15-1
Fumbles-lost…0-0, 2-1
Punts-Avg…1-21, 7-23.4
Penalties…6-49 1-15
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing: B—Mathis 12-93, Alves 9-16, Frederick 4-13, Arve 3-8, Flores 2-3. SB — Stuva 11-17, Rosborough 7-14, Perez 4-2, M. Perez 2-7, Foster 1 (minus 3), Velasquez 1-0, Gellison 2 (minus 10).
Passing: B—Munoz 12-16-0, 209, Mathis 0-1-0. SB — Rosborough 6-12-1, 21. B Perez 1-2-0, 5. Zeron 0-1-0.
Receiving: B — Arve 6-87, Leiser 4-104, Perry 1-9, Mathis 1-7. SB — Foster 2-13, Chandler 3-13, Stuva 1-1, M. Perez 1 (minus 1)
