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[/media-credit]Friday night marked the 50th meeting between Woodside and Carlmont, and the teams hit the ground running. Literally.
Led by the talents of quarterback Joshua Holman, the Wildcats pulled through with a 27-6 victory over the Scots, sending Carlmont to their third straight loss.
Not much passing was done in this contest, which featured dominant running games by both teams. However, the ability to make breakout plays is what set the two teams apart.
With just six seconds left in the second quarter and one play to run, Woodside had the ball on its own 26 yard-line.
Holman dropped back to pass, but didn’t see anything down field. He rolled out to the left where he could see nothing but blue jerseys, cut inside, and followed his blockers all the way down the right sideline into the end zone.
“I was supposed to pass the ball, but as I was scanning the field I didn’t see anybody, so I decided to take the ball and I took the opening and I was fortunate to score,” said Holman.
Holman’s 74-yard touchdown run was his second of the game. It put the Wildcats up 21-0 at halftime, and was just one of the many flashy runs by number ten. On his first run of the game, Holman was pushed out of bounds into the Carlmont trainer’s $500 massage table, breaking its legs into pieces.
The Carlmont secondary shut down Woodside receivers all night, forcing Holman to take it himself on most designed pass plays. But Holman couldn’t do all of the work himself.
Woodside’s other major offensive contributor was running back Tommy Cook, who had two rushing touchdowns.
“We put in hard work over the bye week, came back this week and I got good blocking,” said Cook, but he admitted that this win was not pretty. “We got to work on turnovers. We fumbled the ball a lot and I had a fumble too. So we got to work on turnovers.”
Despite the highlights from Holman and Cook, the game was dominated by great defensive efforts on both sides.
Woodside was able to force two fumbles in the second quarter, both of which lead to touchdowns.
Carlmont forced four fumbles and an interception, all in Carlmont territory where the Wildcats were threatening to score.
Despite these great defensive efforts, the Scots were not able to produce on offense. Carlmont’s first and only touchdown was a third quarter, four-yard, run by Yancey Portis.
The defense was on the field way too often and they were inheriting a short field almost every time.
“We’ve got a lot of two-way players. And all linemen are playing two ways. It’s hard to get pounded on defense and then go on offense and try to pound the other guy,” said Carlmont Coach Jason Selli.
While Carlmont (1-3) will work on improving stamina and offensive power this week in preparation for PAL-Lake Division opener at San Mateo (7pm), Woodside (2-2) will focus on diminishing turnovers for when they face undefeated Menlo at home in PAL-Ocean Division opener (7pm).
“We’ve been getting better every week. We had two weeks to prepare for Carlmont because of the bye week and I think it showed. We really dialed in, at least our first half performance. But for next week, we have to get a lot better really quickly,” said Woodside Coach Josh Bowie.
