Pitman High varsity football has a perfect 5-0 record heading into league play for the second time in three seasons after Friday night’s homecoming 42-0 shutout over Summerville High that saw the Pride start off slow in the first half despite the defense tossing a clean sheet.
“Just nice to get it over with. I thought their kids came in and played really hard with a lot of heart. We were spotty, but we had senior night, homecoming and an opponent we scrimmaged against,” said Pitman head coach Tom Tyler. “We did pretty well, kids just have to be truthful and come out ready to play. We did okay; I think we can do better.”
“Honestly we didn’t really good in the first half. We didn’t get real good blocks and we need to step up our game. We did alright in the end,” said Pitman’s Payton Bass.
Bass played like he had something to prove, rushing for nearly as many yards as Summerville had as a team for the game.
Summerville was held to 107 total yards on offense.
Bass finished the game with 16 carries for 104 yards and scored four of the team’s six touchdowns.
“Definitely league is going to be tougher than preseason, but we are going to work hard in the bye week and practice real hard and get our game right and we are going to come out and do what we do,” said Bass.
Bass notched the first score of the game when he ran it in from nine yards out with 8:09 left in the first to make it, 7-0.
Bass scored his second touchdown of the game with 10:15 left in the second and after a missed conversion, the score read 13-0.
Pitman quarterback Treyton Fair then found Denzel Steckwren for a 14-yard touchdown pass to extend the lead to 20-0 with 1:30 left till halftime.
“It wasn’t the prettiest first half, we could have done a lot more things better in the first half, but once the second half came we knew we needed to focus and score more points,” said Steckwren.
It didn’t take long for Pitman to keep things rolling after they held Summerville to 50 total yards in the first half.
Bass made his way into the end zone for his third touchdown in the third quarter with 7:45 on the clock and the score read 27-0.
With 10:39 left in the game, Bass made his way into the end zone once again after ramming his way in from 14 yards out to extend the lead to 34-0.
Pitman’s Chris Avalos scored the Pride’s final touchdown on a two-play drive that saw him rush for 57 yards, ending with a 25-yard run into the end zone to make it 42-0 after the two-point conversion was good from Youssef Nagi.
“Started off a little slow but down the stretch the team came together. We had little injuries as well, but we had players fill in great and things worked together in the end,” said Fair. “We just came out a little flat in the first and in the second half we got going and played to our standards, made it a nice night.”
Fair finished the night going 12 of 16 for 169 yards and tossed a touchdown.
Pride running back Jakob Partida rushed the ball 14 times for 79 yards and Chris Avalos had 57 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Pitman also turned the ball over on a Partida fumble while the defense had an interception from Ricardo Aguilar.
Pitman will have a bye week before they kick off CCAL play against Enochs on the road at 7 p.m. Sept. 28.
“Our team is ready for league, we just need to keep grinding and playing well and we should be good,” Fair added.
