Monterey Trail holds off late push from Inderkum in ground-and-pound battle
With the heat hovering near triple digits at kickoff in Elk Grove, Inderkum and Monterey Trail kicked off 2025 in Friday’s only matchup between teams ranked in The Sacramento Bee’s preseason Top 10.
The early evening’s heat pushed start times back to enable cooler kickoffs, but when the varsity game began, the Mustangs started off their season hot.
Coming out of their inflatable Mustang tunnel to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and with freshly installed LED flashing lights at Mark Macres Memorial Stadium, Monterey Trail relied heavily on its signature veer offense, grounding and pounding the ball with a stout run game that sealed the victory late in the fourth.
The No. 8 Mustangs of the Elk Grove Unified School District featured several players with significant gains on the ground. Led by freshman Nigel Flowers (six carries, 90 yards), sophomore Xander McKee (10 carries, 87 yards) and senior Odie Jefferson (16 carries, 58 yards), Monterey Trail defeated No. 9 Inderkum 27-22 in the 2025 season opener.
“Every day we have practice and we put in that work,” said Jefferson, who also had an interception on defense Friday. “All summer, since January, we’ve just been grinding, and now we’re working,”
Mustangs head coach T.J. Ewing, the program’s founding coach who looks as though he can still go pound-for-pound with any one of his players in the weight room, said there are always big expectations within his team. While Monterey Trail usually frontloads its nonleague schedule with out-of-area heavyweights, the Mustangs haven’t lost a league game since 2017, a streak of 34 straight wins entering 2025.
“What we’ve established as school traditions keep us grounded, humble and hungry,” Ewing said. “When they say, ‘tradition never graduates,’ it’s true if you have the structure and the kids, coaches and boosters who keep it alive.”
Jefferson returned the opening kick 90 yards to the end zone, but it was called back on a penalty. Monterey Trail finished the drive, however, on a 75-yard march ending in a 27-yard QB keeper from Kaden Love to open the scoring at the 5:53 mark of the first. Love capped another scoring drive for MT, dropping back to pass and pulling it down for a 9-yard scamper to make it 14-0 with 7:28 left in the second quarter.
The Mustangs extended their lead to 21-0 with 1:44 remaining in the half as McKee exploded for a 42-yard run. Inderkum responded immediately, as Ceyean Brown returned the ensuing kickoff 90 yards for a score to make it 21-7 before the half.
Inderkum made it 16 unanswered points through the third quarter thanks to a safety and a 2-yard run from Brody Cole to trim the deficit to 21-16 entering the fourth.
The Mustangs engineered a 68-yard drive capped by a 4-yard score from Jefferson to extend their lead to 27-16 with 6:15 left in the game. The Tigers kept fighting with a 13-yard connection from Cole to Leandrew Jenkins to make it 27-22 with 4:17 left. But MT grounded out the clock with a big run from Flowers.
“When I look back at this one, it’s just how we stayed together, even throughout the second half when we weren’t putting as many points on the board,” Love said. “We made a few mistakes, but we pushed through it, and we finished through, and got the dub.”
Inderkum young but gritty
Now at the helm for the Tigers is former offensive coordinator and current athletic director Justin Reber, who has made plenty of stops throughout the region, including Sacramento, Rio Linda, El Dorado and Bella Vista.
Reber asked his players in a recent team meeting to raise their hands if they’d ever played in a varsity game before.
“Nine players raised their hands,” Reber said. “We’re young and inexperienced. We graduated a lot. A lot of our guys don’t have varsity minutes, but they show up to practice at 6 a.m. We’ve got more than 150 guys showing up every day.”
One of three Cole brothers on the team — all younger siblings of former Bee All-Metro player Ricky Cole), —Brody Cole passed for nearly 130 yards and a touchdown while his top target, Jenkins, amassed five catches for 59 yards.
Up next for Monterey Trail is a bye week before hosting Bay Area power Amador Valley on Sept. 5, while Inderkum hosts Marin Catholic next week.
Nick Pecoraro is a longtime Sacramento-area sports journalist and former host of “Premier Preps with Nick Pecoraro,” a weekly prep show available on YouTube that recaps games and teams in the Sacramento area each week. Find it at youtube.com/@PremierPreps.