Summit run down in CIF championship game
It took the Wildomar Elsinore High School football team 83 seasons and five trips to the title game to secure its first CIF championship. Summit will have to wait until its sixth season for another shot at its first.
Summit ran just 13 offensive plays in the second half as Elsinore's ground game milked the clock on the way to securing a 21-7 win over the SkyHawks Saturday night in the CIF-SS Eastern Division championship game.
Summit (10-3-1) was only outgained by 49 yards but a first-half fake punt gone bad and an interception in the end zone that ended the SkyHawks final fourth-quarter drive were too much to overcome given Elsinore's glaring advantage in time of possession.
"We needed some more offense to stay on the field," Summit coach Tony Barile said. "You give them the opportunity to pound the ball, the opportunity to run the clock, they're going to hurt you."
Running backs Daniel Rodriguez and Seth Middlemas combined for 221 yards and all three touchdowns for Elsinore (12-2). They're smash-mouth performance was punctuated by a 16-play 61-yard drive that drained 7 minutes and 49 seconds off the clock and gave Elsinore a 21-7 lead with 11:22 to play.
Summit answered with a 64-yard march in less than two and-a-half minutes but the SkyHawks' fait was sealed when junior quarterback Bernard Porter, who was 14 for 22 passing with 116 yards, was intercepted in the end zone on second-and-goal from the Elsinore 5-yard line.
"When it's 14-7 they can make one play and they're back in the game," Elsinore coach Tony Peralta said. "But with it being 21-7 we're able to play to our strengths. It made
them more of a passing team and we could get after the quarterback a little more."
Summit's passing game looked just fine on its third possession of the game, a 12-play 97-yard drive that gave Summit a 7-0 lead with 9:29 left in the first half.
The end of Summit's next possession, however, was when the game turned.
Punting out of his own 11-yard line Summit senior Jameel Erving made a run for the first down but was stopped at the 4-yard line. After two punts and a blocked field goal on its first three possessions, Elsinore punched in its first touchdown on the next play.
With momentum hanging in the balance, Elsinore's ground game gained traction as it went 55 yards in seven plays following an ensuing Summit three-and-out to take a 14-7 lead with two minutes remaining in the first half.
"They didn't make any mistakes and we did," Barile said. "We needed something big to get us going and we never got it. They just grinded it out."
Summit's Donte Deayon had nine receptions for 77 yards and the lone Summit touchdown. The SkyHawks highly recruited receiver Devon Blackmon was held without a catch, a 19-yard run from the quarterback position one of two touches on the night.
Summit was firmly in the game when Elsinore missed a field goal on its initial third-quarter drive but the rest of the second half was vintage Elsinore as its Wing-t produced drives of 7:55 and 7:49.
The first mammoth march gave Elsinore a near insurmountable 14-points lead and the second drained more than half of the final quarter as all Elsinore needed to do was kneel on the ball twice before the championship celebration erupted.
About Clay
Clay Fowler has been covering high school sports for six years in California and Texas. He was born in Dallas, attended the University of Texas and worked in Central Texas before joining the Daily Bulletin staff in 2006.
Email Clay here
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