By Tim Watanabe
twatanabe@redmond-reporter.com
Life is good for Juanita football head coach Shaun Tarantola and his Rebels as they polished off their second-straight win against a 4A school last Friday against the Redmond Mustangs, 19-6, at Walter L. Seabloom Stadium.
Unlike Redmond’s season opener against 2A juggernaut Prosser, during which they were blown out 47-13, the Mustangs stayed competitive with the Rebels, but ended up making crucial mistakes. Penalties forced Redmond into third-and-long situations, preventing them from getting back into the game.
“We feel good about winning our first two games of the year against good competition,” said Tarantola. “But we feel like we can get a lot better… there’s a lot of things we can improve upon.”
THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY
The story behind the Rebels’ win, according to Redmond head coach Mike Pluschke, was that his team simply got in its own way too often.
The Mustangs gave up a number of unnecessary penalties and had a couple of ill-timed defensive breakdowns in third-and-long situations that allowed Juanita junior quarterback Derek Kaufman to escape and run the ball to a first down, including the final play of the game that mattered as the Mustangs were looking to get the ball back via a punt late in the fourth quarter.
“You gotta give (Juanita) credit, they were patient with their running game at times,” Pluschke noted. “We had them in a couple of long situations and we thought we had them, but we kind of shot ourselves in the foot a little bit.”
Neither team passed the football very much, but when Juanita decided to let the pigskin fly, they made it count.
Early in the second quarter, Kaufman launched a 31-yard pass from midfield into the arms of receiver Kris Otterholt, who missed nearly all of last year with a broken ankle.
Two plays later, the Rebels ran the ball into the end zone, and later during the quarter it was the Kaufman-Otterholt duo again striking from 12 yards to cap off a 15-play drive that started from Juanita’s 33.
“We’re working our tails off on open-field tackling,” said Pluschke. “We just need to solidify some of the things that we’ve done tonight to get in our own way.”
COVERING CONFORTO
The key for the Rebels was unmistakably to limit the effectiveness of Mustangs’ quarterback Michael Conforto, and they were quite successful.
With Juanita’s line covering Conforto like a sleeping bag, the 6-1, 185-pounder was hardly able to get any good looks to pass, going 1-for-6 in the game with 20 yards on his lone completion, and also fell well short of his 20-carry, 120 yard rushing performance against Prosser in week one.
“(Conforto) is a great player, and our defense has done an outstanding job, as a unit we’ve given up 16 points in two games,” said Tarantola. “Our defense is really playing well and we knew that would be a strength of our team… but he was a tough task, and our guys did a good job overall slowing him down.”
Juanita ended up outgaining Redmond 316 yards to 169, with 246 of those on the ground. The win gives more weight to the team being ranked ninth in the state in class 3A.
The Rebels take on Sammamish this Friday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. in their league opener at Juanita High.
