Montgomery Aztecs head coach Julio Alcala praised his team’s effort over the duration of the 2010 high school football season despite seeing it in on the short end of a 34-18 loss to top-seeded St. Augustine in the quarterfinal round of the San Diego Section Division III playoffs.
“I thought we did well,” said Alcala, whose team finished 8-4, including a 1-1 showing in the playoffs. “We competed with everybody we played. Even in the game against Eastlake, the top team in the county, I thought we did some good things. I’m proud of the kids, of what they did on the field and what they did for Montgomery.”
The Aztecs defeated visiting San Marcos, 44-7, on Nov. 19 to claim the school’s first-ever home playoff victory. Last Friday’s quarterfinal-round game at Mesa College wasn’t as close.
The Saints led 20-0 and 34-8 before standout rusher Diego Rodriguez closed out the game with a pair of touchdown runs. Rodriguez rushed 24 times for 191 yards to finish the season with 262 carries for 2,359 yards. He scored a team-leading 31 touchdowns, including 29 rushing TDs.
Evan Crower led St. Augustine (9-2) with four touchdown passes — one each to Nicklaus Ruppert, Nicholas Gonsalves, Lucas Morales and Darren Critchlow.
Jordan Lippman passed four yards to Manny Quiambao for the Aztecs’ first touchdown. Quiambao finished the game with 13 carries for 111 yards as Montgomery rolled up 298 total rushing yards.
“I thought we competed well but we had a couple mistakes that we couldn’t recover from,” Alcala said. “Unlike the game against San Marcos, we forced two turnovers but we didn’t capitalize on either of them. That was frustrating. We were in their red zone two other times. We just couldn’t come away with any points.”
Sean Davey led the Eastern League co-champion Saints with two picks. Crower completed 13 of 15 passes for 166 yards.
