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“Monday Night Football,” high school edition, took place at Los Altos High School with the Eagles, taking advantage of their home-field surroundings, coming from behind to defeat Fremont, 21-13.
The game was originally scheduled to be played on a Friday night, like virtually all high school games. But Fremont had some positive COVID tests that week and the game was postponed.
Los Altos coach Dave DeGeronimo, desperate to try to arrange a full schedule for his team, managed, with the agreement of Fremont, to get the game rescheduled for a Monday — three days after playing Saratoga on a Thursday and four days before playing another rescheduled game against San Lorenzo Valley this Saturday.
How did the Eagles like playing on a Monday night?
Just fine after rallying from a 13-0 deficit to pull out the win.
As DeGeronimo told his celebrating team in the post-game huddle: “You guys own control of the El Camino Division.”
That’s right. Win the rest of their games and the Eagles (5-2, 4-0) are champions. They currently are tied in the loss column and a half-game ahead of Cupertino (6-0, 3-0).
“We are really trying hard to win league, that’s our number one goal,” sophomore quarterback Jimmy Flynn said.
On Oct. 8, Los Altos shut down the prolific Gunn ground game in a 34-7 victory. But on Monday, Fremont’s jumbo-sized fullback TJ Takafua was an extremely difficult individual to bring down. Takafua, listed at 6-foot and 310 pounds, carried 20 times for 172 yards.
“We had a whole week to prepare for Gunn,” DeGeronimo said. “Fremont had nine days before playing us and put in a three-back set we hadn’t seen before.”
Fremont (3-4, 1-2) controlled time of possession in the first half and scored the first two touchdowns of the game to go up 13-0.
At that point Los Altos went to the air and drove 91 yards to get on the scoreboard. Min Park took a screen pass from Flynn 55 yards to get into scoring position and three plays later Flynn connected with Thomas Schumann on a 19-yard touchdown pass that made it 13-7 at halftime.
On its second possession of the third quarter Los Altos went 59 yards, again almost entirely through the air, to take the lead 14-13 after a 17-yard touchdown pass to Cole Rafferty and a Johan Cisneros PAT.
Rafferty, who caught a 34-yard pass earlier in the drive, finished with six catches for 103 yards.
Fremont moved the ball with a heavy dose of the 310-pound Takafua, but got into a long-yardage third down after a couple of penalties and was forced to punt.
Los Altos took over and went 71 yards in eight plays — this time picking up all of the yardage on the ground — and scored on a 4-yard run by Greg Schumann.
Then it was up to the defense to get the ball back, and that happened sooner than expected when Rafael Arce recovered a fumble on Fremont’s first play.
The Firebirds got the ball back one more time with two minutes left. And even on their two-minute drill they handed it to Takafua, who picked up 24 yards on three carries. But once they tried to go to the air they ran into problems as Brock Bowman got a sack, John O’Sullivan caused a fumble and Channing Hautop’s sack brought up a fourth and 28 situation that Fremont was unable to convert.
Then it was time to celebrate.
“Our guys kept fighting,” DeGeronimo said. “The kids are starting to understand what a big deal it is to be undefeated in league.
Now Los Altos is on a collision course with Cupertino and will play the Pioneers in the regular-season finale Nov. 5.
“We’re really flipping the switch this year and we’re doing it for the seniors,” Flynn said. “We’ve got a bunch of dawgs. At the end of the day our 11 is better than their 11.”
