Crafting a trio of victories in their first week, Escalon’s varsity flag football girls got their history-making season off on the right foot.
This is the first year the sport is being played as a sanctioned league sport in Escalon and the Lady Cougars, along with varsity head coach Steve Largent, are happy to be part of history at the school.
“We opened up with Golden Valley and won 26-0,” Largent said of the inaugural game on Aug. 21. “First touchdown in EHS Flag Football history, Alyssa Ball.”
The girls then defeated Patterson, 26-6, and held off a determined Livingston team by a 14-13 final on Thursday, Aug. 24.
Junior varsity action, with head coach Joseph Dalpogetti, saw the team go 2-0 their first week, defeating Golden Valley 8-0 on Aug. 21 with a touchdown from Rebecca Wampler and the 2-point conversion by Reagan Baker. Thursday, they defeated Livingston 26-0, with Adrianna Romero keying the effort with three interceptions.
On Saturday, the varsity girls went to an all-day tournament in Lodi, battling their way to the tournament championship contest.
“We had a really great Saturday going 4-1 on the day,” Largent said.
The Lady Cougars fell short there, 12-7, to the host Lodi Flames but finished second in the multi-team tournament.
“We started off the day beating the St. Mary’s Rams 7-0 and that catapulted us into a 20-6 win against the Tokay Tigers in game two,” Largent explained. “We opened up the playbook a little bit, first play against Tokay, as Sammy Lang hit Alyssa Ball for a TD on our first offensive play and that jump started us and we never looked back.”
A win also came against the Tracy JV 26-6, which put Escalon into the Gold out bracket, matched up against Christian Brothers.
“We fell behind early 6-0 but our stout defense created four interceptions and we were able to capitalize on them as Hannah Wampler got into the end zone twice on our favorite goal line play and we beat the second D1 private school on the day.”
The fifth and final game of the day for Escalon was for the tournament title against Lodi.
“It was like playing a mirror image of ourselves,” Largent said. “They have the same type of philosophy and game plan, keep things simple on the ground, don’t make mistakes and lean on the defense.”
Escalon was down 6-0 at the half, and Lodi turned an interception early in the second half into a touchdown to make it 12-0.
“We scored late and had all the momentum but unfortunately we ran out of time in the end,” Largent said.
Senior Cali Granis said she is glad to be a part of the team, making a little history.
“It feels really nice to have a team that is together every single day after school, we really get to know the game in depth; I’m just super excited to see what this season holds,” she said, adding that the strong start isn’t surprising. “I knew we were going to be pretty good because we have some very athletic girls, we have a lot of speed but there’s always big competition out there.”
Fellow senior Alyssa Ball, who has already etched her name in the history books by scoring the first ever flag football touchdown for the varsity girls, said being on the team is something she looked forward to.
“I was so excited when they told us we were going to have flag football this year,” Ball said. “In the beginning, it was a little hard at first (understanding all the rules) but once we started actually going to live scrimmages and games, I felt like I caught on pretty fast and so did the rest of the team. We’re having a blast.”
The 3-0 start in the first week of games was also satisfying for senior Sammy Lang.
“It feels good but we can’t get ahead of ourselves too much … we’re going to get beat, it just happens, so we have to be prepared to handle that well,” Lang said.
And that loss did come on Saturday, but the team and coaches handled it well, taking it in stride as a part of the game.
“As a whole, it was just such a great day full of team bonding, snacks in the shade, laughs, incredible parent support and just a really great way to spend a Saturday growing as a team,” Largent noted. “It was awesome to take the girls to a new venue against much larger schools than us and to have the success we did. Our coaching staff was so very proud of the girls and we look forward to getting back to work this week.”
