KING CITY — King City Mustangs football team set a school record for finishing the regular season with a perfect 10-0 record, qualifying for the Central Coast Section playoffs as the unbeaten Mission South Division champion.
King City earned the title as they led the division with a 5-0 mark but received a battle in last Saturday’s road game at Robert Louis Stevenson, as they had to mount a second-half comeback to claim the 28-21 win. Defensive back JC Navarro closed out the Pirates with an interception in the end zone.
“All the extra distractions that we had to deal with before and during the game had us out of our regular routine,” said King City head coach Mac Villanueva. “That included playing a Saturday day game, having to get dressed in a baseball dug out as we had no locker room, and a warm day were a challenge. On the field, Stevenson had a good game plan by keeping us off the field offensively as much as possible in the first half. We made adjustments late in the game and were able to run the ball and play great defense and win it at the end. When you have an undefeated record, teams just play a little harder. Our experience was a big difference in the game and we’ll take this experience to help us as we enter the playoffs.”
Stevenson used the clock wisely as they held the ball for most of the first half and limited the Mustangs to just two possessions. The Pirates scored at 5:49 of the first quarter to take a 7-0 lead with a 30-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Lincoln Clymo and a point-after attempt by Aiden Sanborn.
King City had trouble gaining yardage and had to punt back to the Pirates. The Mustang defense did force the Pirates to punt, although Stevenson held the ball for almost eight minutes.
In the second quarter, Kody Lambert scored for King City on a pass play from Rocky Vasquez and a PAT by Bryan Gonzales tied the game at 7-7.
With time running out in the first half, Barak De La Rosa scored on a two-yard pass play from Clymo and the Pirates took a 14-7 lead with the second PAT by Sanborn.
In the second half, Stevenson continued with the short passing game and runs by Clymo to keep the ball from King City. With four minutes left to play in the third quarter, De La Rosa caught an eight-yard pass on the home side from Clymo to score his second touchdown of the game.
The 21-7 deficit did nothing but fire up the Mustangs as the veteran team knew that there was plenty of time to make a comeback. Senior running back Carson Tidwell ran on to the field on the next Mustang possession ready to take his team to another level.
A Tidwell nine-yard touchdown cut the lead to 21-14 with just a couple of minutes left in the third quarter. The speedy Tidwell took over in the fourth quarter as he tied the game with a 37-yard run and then scored on a nine-yard run to give his team the lead at 28-21.
The Mustang defense kept Stevenson from getting any closer than the 35-yard line and the game ended on the timely interception by Navarro. King City then took a knee and ran out the clock to reach the 10-mark in wins. The Mustangs rushed to the home part of the stands and sang “All Hail to KC High” to their fans.
Tidwell finished the game with 189 yards on 18 carries with the three touchdowns, and Lambert led the Mustang receivers with four receptions for 41 yards. Vasquez went eight of 14 passing with one touchdown pass and no interceptions.
Rocky Villanueva, Roman Vasquez, Oscar Santos and Lambert were praised for their strong defensive performance.
“We stopped them enough to win this ball game,” said Coach Villanueva. “You lived up to your expectations and achieved a 10-win season. We will get a home game now and will run out of that tunnel one more time.”
Mustang defensive coordinator Evan Petrovic told the team a short story about an incident that happened when many of the senior players were on the JV team and were having a good season.
“Four years ago when you seniors were freshmen, we were having a really bad season,” Petrovic recalled. “I was talking to Coach Sarina and we looked down to the JV field and saw how well you were doing, and we told each other that you will be a 10-0 team some day. That is a true story.”
On Sunday, King City received the No. 4 seed in the CCS Division III playoffs and will host No. 5 seed Menlo-Atherton at 7 p.m. this Friday, Nov. 13, at War Memorial Stadium. A win could send the Mustangs to the semifinals against No. 1 Wilcox or No. 8 Ann Sobrato.
