Vandals Pick up First Win of the Season

On a hot afternoon the final day of August at Crutchley Field, Eureka spotted Coleville a first quarter touchdown, then proceeded to score 46 unanswered points in taking a 46-6 win over the visiting Wolves.

It marked the first time in four years the Vandals had topped the Wolves. The last time the teams played in Eureka, 2017, Coleville won an 8-6 game, very unusual for the normally high scoring 8-man game.

But this week, the Vandals found the offense Coach Fred Minoletti said they didn’t have in the opening game the week before at Smith Valley. “We executed this game what we didn’t do last game. Having kids where they needed to be in the right spots helped a lot. We found the right spots for a given player and we worked all week on that.”

Defensively, Minoletti said the Vandals were just more inspired. “We were pretty flat at Smith Valley. We didn’t play with a lot of heart, but we did today. It was our second game and that helped, too.”

The Wolves jumped out to the 6-0 lead after recovering a Vandal fumble on fourth down at the 35-yard line. They then scored on a 25-yard screen pass from Ernesto Sandoval to Lawrence Anderson, at 8:50 in the first period, but missed the twopoint conversion try.

It would prove to be the only time the Wolves posed any sort of serious threat.

Meantime, the Vandals took the kickoff, drove 80 yards downfield and scored with about 15 seconds left in the first quarter with Danny Lee powering in from the five-yard line and the conversion gave Eureka an 8-6 lead.

The Vandals then added three more scores in the second quarter for a 30-6 halftime lead. Lee scored his second of the day on a 10-yard draw play at 7:58 for a 14-6 lead. Ashton Sanders followed with two long touchdown runs of 72 and 89 yards. Eureka scored twice more in the second half.

Coming up this week, the Vandals (1-1) will travel to Whittell on Friday night. Eureka won last year’s game 36-8.

The Warriors were crushed 64-18 at home last week by Mineral County who brought a balanced attack with 245 passing yards and 227 rushing yards.