High school football: Clovis too much for Garces in a season-opening victory
Throwing three touchdowns in the first half is good for any quarterback.
For Clovis High sophomore Deagan Rose, he wasn’t happy about that.
Even Cougars coach Aaron Wilkins said “he couldn’t get it going” in the first half.
Rose agreed after finishing the game with four touchdowns in The Bee’s 15th-ranked Cougars’ 41-27 victory over No. 10 Garces in the season opener for both teams at Lamonica Stadium on Thursday.
“When he just gets dialed in, it’s just hard to stop him,” Wilkins said. “Does a great job leading the offense and there’s still a lot of stuff he can get better at. He’s a sophomore, you know what I mean? It’s just a lot of fun to watch him grow.”
After Garces got a late touchdown in the first half to trim Clovis’ lead to 22-14, Rose went to the locker room and sat by himself.
“Just talking to myself and say ‘calm down,’ ” he said. “It’s just football. It’s a game ‘you’ve been playing your whole life.’ I didn’t play my best, but I got the job done.”
Rose finished with 243 passing yards, but he was also backed by running back Noah Luginbill, who topped 100+ rushing yards and a touchdown.
He even made a difference on defense with an interception as a linebacker. He also caused a fumble, had three pass deflections and led the team with 12 tackles.
But when Luginbill’s name was called in the second half, he took it upon himself to wear down the Rams’ defense.
“We’re gonna come in, we’re going to pound people and we’re just gonna do our best to get the first down, every single drive,” he said.
“Coach just said, ‘let’s keep pounding and let’s keep hitting him in the mouth.’ Eventually they started to give out a little bit and we just kept on pushing in the fourth quarter.”
Missing jersey’s for Garces, but Clovis steps in
Prior to the game, Garces was in a bit of a quandary.
The Rams’ offensive line were missing their jerseys after one of the boxes that was delivered didn’t include them.
Leave it up to Clovis athletic director Jesse Hardwick to save the game for Garces.
He issued the Clovis game-worn freshman jerseys to the Rams with blue lettering on the numbers.
Trevor Horn, Garces’ assistant athletic director, thanked Hardwick for helping them.
