By Matt Schuler<\/p>\n
(Azusa)- It was another first round home playoff opener, another Olympic league opponent, another match-up that the critics didn\u2019t give the Aztecs a chance to win, but the ending to this story is quite different.<\/p>\n
This year Azusa took fate into its own hands by rallying back from a 14-0 deficit to defeat\u00a0 Valley Christian, 35-14, in the opening round of the CIF Southern Section playoffs Friday night at Citrus College.<\/p>\n
Last year the Aztecs were dealt a similar hand in the opening round of the playoffs, facing Village Christian out of the Olympic, a game they lost 31-24 to end their season.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s effort by the Aztecs was a team victory, but the one player that took the team on his shoulders was quarterback Jacob Martinez.<\/p>\n
Down 21-14 with 4:14 remaining in the second, Martinez, who accounted for over 300 yards of total offense, threw up a prayer and connected with a leaping Jesus Arteaga in the end zone to deadlock the score at 14 a piece.<\/p>\n
Desmond Reed, who finished with over 100 total yards, came up with the big defensive play of the night. With VC on the verge of scoring, Reed picked off a Patrick Avila pass in the red zone and returned it to the 50.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids are just resillient and they want it bad,\u201d said Azusa head coach Joe Scherf. \u201cWe had a good game plan going in and the kids executed it. Even when we were down, the whole time they never lost confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Scherf then rewarded his tailback with the ball and Reed converted the two yard run into a touchdown, making it 35-14 with 3:01 to play in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe been down before this season and we\u2019ve battled back,\u201d said Scherf. \u201cWe knew we could move the ball on them, the question was can we move it consistently\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Aztecs (8-3) now look ahead to a quarterfinal match up with San Dimas (9-2), who they lost to 41-16 in their first regular season game.<\/p>\n
Valley Christian started off the game hot, forcing the Aztecs opening two drives three and out and replying with two touchdown drives. First Avila hooked up with David Coley on a screen pass taken 39 yards for the score followed by a Jaylen Raye 20 yard toucdown run, creating a 14-0 gap with 1:43 to play in the first.<\/p>\n
The Crusaders (4-7) also had two late game scoring oportunties, but turned the ball over each possesion in the red zone, including a goal line fumble recovered by Robert Chelada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Matt Schuler (Azusa)- It was another first round home playoff opener, another Olympic league opponent, another match-up that the critics didn\u2019t give the Aztecs a chance to win, but the ending to this story is quite different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20356"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20394,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20356\/revisions\/20394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}