Oak Ridge beats Whitney with defense and superb sophomores

With 2:34 left in the game between Oak Ridge and Whitney High School on Saturday afternoon in El Dorado Hills, the Trojans took over at midfield. They needed a first down to seal a win over a Sierra Foothill League opponent.

Enter Jake Hall. The 6-foot, 200-pound sophomore running back who doubles as a linebacker on the Trojans defense had runs of 7, 2and 13 yards on the final drive behind the Oak Ridge offensive line made up of Tyler Dean, Brennan Ellison, Vincent Rupena, Zach Smith and Bryson Summers.

That gave The Bee’s second-ranked team a first down and the 10-6 win over Whitney (0-1).

“Jake Hall is a big, physical, strong back,” Oak Ridge coach Eric Cavaliere said. “We felt we could run (with him) inside the guards. That’s what he does really well. He closed it out for us. Credit to the offensive line, we needed to move the ball there at the end. We were able to do that and that was huge.”

Oak Ridge (1-1) led 10-0 at the half after sophomore kicker Carson Nichols made a 34-yard field goal and junior running back Reese Catchings scored from 2 yards out.

Whitney’s lone touchdown and the only points of the second half came on a 37-yard touchdown run by junior Anthony Parker, who finished with 77 yards rushing. Whitney senior Nick Tawney had eight catches for 76 yards and also had an interception in the second half. Freshman cornerback Phoenix Rose also had a second-half interception for Whitney.

A pair of Oak Ridge sophomores made plays when it mattered. Cornerback Sebastian Sutton had a key interception in the fourth quarter to keep Whitney off the board and quarterback Drew Cowart finished the game with 173 yards passing and added 56 yards on the ground. Senior wide receiver Brandon Barthel had eight catches for 78 yards.

Cowart became the starter for the shortened spring season after last season’s Bee 2019 player of the year, Justin Lamson, enrolled early at Syracuse. Oak Ridge was also missing Ryan Enney — another senior leader that tore his posterior cruciate ligament last week after intercepting a pass against Folsom.

“It’s a tough situation for Drew,” Cavaliere said. “He didn’t think he would be the starting quarterback (this year) by any means. Not only that, but his first game was against Folsom, which is a pretty tall task. Drew has shown toughness and has shown the ability to tuck it and get first downs when we need him to. He’s just going to keep getting better.”

Oak Ridge will travel to Placer County to play Rocklin next week. Despite having more home games on the schedule, the Trojans decided to honor all of their seniors prior to Saturday’s game with a social-distanced celebration.

“We found out during the last year there are no guarantees of anything,” Cavaliere said.

“Who knows what will happen next week. Knowing that we had a home game today, we wanted to take advantage of that (to honor) our seniors.”

Whitney will host Granite Bay on Saturday after the game was pushed back a day due to an area-wide referee shortage. This was Whitney’s first game of the spring after its game against Rocklin was canceled last week due to COVID-19 problems on the team.

This story was originally published March 21, 2021 at 7:11 AM.