GILROY—There were plenty of fireworks and festivities off the field during Homecoming Friday night, but Gilroy High had little to celebrate on the field.
North Monterey County (3-3, 1-1 league) rallied with consecutive touchdown runs in the third quarter to walk away with the 14-10 victory over Gilroy (2-5, 2-1 league) in a game full of miscues and mistakes on both sides.
“We couldn’t do anything offensively,” said Gilroy coach Brian Boyd. “Every game we have lost, the team gets momentum and we can’t get it back.”
North County was penalized for 100 yards during the first half, allowing Gilroy to jump out to an early 10-0 lead.
Patrick Hsu got the Mustangs on the board with an 85-yard pick-six of North Monterey County quarterback Jordan Graves with 3:51 left in the first half.
“I was able sit in the coverage and follow my blockers in,” Hsu said. “I thought we would come out strong after that but we didn’t come to play.”
Playing both ways, Hsu made the catch of the game when while in full stride he reached high up with both hand to hull in a pass and then rolled to ground for 23 yards in the second half.
The only other Mustang score came off a Sean Kaufman 30-yard field goal with 10:01 left in the second quarter. He missed a 40-yard field goal later in the third quarter that would have tied the game at 10-10 and broken up the Condor momentum.
The Mustangs were no stranger to penalties of their own, being flagged for 50 yards in the first half, including four early false start penalties.
“They were breaking so we tried to change the cadence up so David (Munoz) could read the linebackers and see what they were doing,” Boyd said. “That is our fault because we don’t practice that enough in practice.”
The Mustangs had a chance to tack on another score before the half. They marched down the field with catches by Carlos Salazar and Mathew Griffith and a 20-yard run by backup running back Deangelo Kamber, who came in after David Montes was injured and couldn’t return.
Riley Filice-Hollar made a nice seven-yard catch during the drive near the goal line but North County forced a fumble and then took a knee to end the half.
The Mustangs had another good chance to score when Antonio Andrade recovered a fumbled kickoff right after Hsu’s interception in the first half. But they ended up turning the ball over on downs after being deep in North County territory.
“We came out flat,” said senior co-captain Devin Nguyen. “They just played harder than us and wanted it more. Me and the other linemen have to step up pick up the blitz better.”
North County’s Christopher Munguia scored on an 85-yard run on the first play of the second half and then ran in the ball in from seven yards out on the following drive.
“We felt they were stacking the box because we ran inside pretty well,” said Condor coach John Villa. “We had a chance to take one of those outside. We blocked it well and he ran a great cut and started to pull away. He is one of the fastest guys on the team.”
The Condors ended the game with a long drive that ate up the clock, ending any chance of last-second heroics.
“If you take those two long touchdowns out the game, it was not a very good game on either side,” Boyd said. “That is the disappointing part because that team is not any better than we are. They struggled like we did.”
North County ran a two-quarterback set with limited success to change up the look.
“We started it about two weeks about because we wanted to influence the competition,” said Villa, who is trying to turn around a program that went 0-10 last year.
“Gilroy played tough,” Villa added. “They played as tough as I thought they would play. They are kind of like us. They play hard. They hit hard. We knew they had a couple players they go to more often and we tried to limit those opportunities.”
