The San Benito High football team couldn’t have entered its bye week at a more opportune time.
Coming off their first victory in a month, the Haybalers (4-4 overall, 1-3 MBL Gabilan) get extra prep time for a Nov. 7 showdown against section power Palma. They’re going to need it, Balers coach Chris Cameron said.
“Palma is perfect (record-wise) right now, so we would have to play a perfect game to beat them,” he said. “We’re still a work in progress, and there are things we need to clean up on both sides of the ball. Hopefully the bye week will get us a little more prepared for this game.”
San Benito is coming off a 38-7 thrashing against a winless Seaside team, earning its first victory in league play. Although it took a month to earn another victory—the Balers’ last win was on Sept. 26 against Oak Grove—Cameron had to pause when asked what else was encouraging about the team’s performance.
Translation: The Balers need to be hitting on all cylinders if they want to have any shot of beating Palma.
“One thing that was really encouraging is we didn’t turn the ball over and we got some turnovers,” he said. “So that’s a positive sign. If we can go out and play a mistake-free game, that forces Palma to beat us.”
Even when San Benito and Gilroy played in the now defunct Prune Bowl, the Balers always looked to Palma as their rival. Nationally and especially in the CCS, the top public-private school games make for the best drama, for the simple fact that the larger private schools—see the West Catholic League—tend to dominate the playoffs in football, basketball and baseball.
And they dominate because a number of top athletes attend those schools, even if it means having to travel 30 minutes or more.
Palma is considered one of those top-notch private programs, and every year it has at least a couple of starters or more who are from Hollister. Some of those players go there for football, some for the environment, some for a combination of both.
Balers guard Evan Balochie has two childhood friends who play for Palma, and he still keeps in touch with both of them.
“This is a game we have to win regardless of who it is,” he said. “Everyone thinks they’re our rivals, but if you think about it, everyone should be our rivals if we’re going to have a successful season. We shouldn’t get up more for one team than another, because in the end it’s still just one game. I take them as another team, but yeah, the team is kind of looking at this like our make or break moment. We just need a win to get into CCS.”
A loss to Palma would mean the Balers would have to win its regular-season finale against North Salinas to make the postseason. Considering North Salinas is on par with Seaside—both teams are winless in league—it would take more than a couple of fluky bounces and factors for the Vikings to pull off the upset.
In last week’s victory, quarterback R.J. Clark rushed for a career-high 116 yards on just 11 carries, including touchdown runs of 16, 51 and 3 yards. Clark pulled off some nifty spin moves in the open field to escape would-be tacklers before reaching the end zone on a pair of electrifying runs.
Clark’s first TD, a 16-yard run, came after he spun away from a sack. His second score, good for 51 yards, came on a keeper that saw him break a tackle at the Seaside 25-yard line.
“I juke a lot in practice, just because as a quarterback your job is not to get hit by the defense,” Clark said. “It comes kind of naturally to me, but it’s not something you think about doing.”
Balers fullback Hunter Nye had another solid game, rushing for 81 yards on 14 carries. San Benito finished with 354 yards of total offense to the Spartans’ 102. Ryan Rodriguez and Andrew Sotelo had interceptions for a San Benito defense that was shredded a week earlier by Alvarez quarterback Edric Gamble, who rushed for 222 yards.
“It felt like forever the last time we won,” Clark said. “We came out here and fought, and got the result we needed.”
