CALN — Coatesville served notice Friday night at Red Raider Stadium that it intends to blow through District 1 on their way to Hershey as the Raiders knocked Downingtown West from the unbeaten ranks with a more than impressive 42-14 Ches-Mont National Division win that was not as close as the score indicates.
Coatesville jumped on the Whippets (2-1 Ches-Mont, 6-1 overall) early as Downingtown West had a very bad start to the game. The Whippets took the opening kickoff and went three and out including a intentional grounding call on quarterback Will Howard. West punted from its own five yard line and Dapree Bryant ran the West punt back 45 yards to the Whippet five yard line. A West penalty put the football on the two yard line and one play later, Aaron Young banged in and Coatesville had a 7-0 lead. And the Raiders were off to the races.
“We take a to of pride in our special teams,” Coatesville head coach Matt Ortega said. “We work on them a lot in practice and we have a good kicker and some special players on special teams and Dapree got us going with the punt return.”
Coatesville (3-0, 7-0) scored two more times in the first period. One was a perfect 58-yard strike from quarterback Ricky Ortega to a streaking Bryant, and then Ortega hit Dymere Miller with a perfect 44-yard pass, and after one period it was a 21-0 Coatesville lead.
“We wanted to get out on them early,” Bryant said. “Their students were doing a lot of talking during the week and it just motivated us even more. And once we got the lead we lost our focus a little bit. We are in front of everybody we play and it is hard to stay focused but we were tonight.”
The Coatesville defense was giving Howard and the Whippets nothing. Howard was sacked four times in the first half and left the game late in the second period with a right hand injury and did not return. Howard was taken to the hospital to be checked out.
Coatesville made it 28-0 on a fourth and five play at the Downingtown West 12 yard line. Ortega faked a pass to the right and hit Jordan Engler in the left flat and Engler bolted the final 12 yards for the score to make it a 28-0 game — and the flood gates were open.
“We wanted to get off to a good start and it could not have gone worse for us,” Downingtown west head coach Mike Milano said. “But give Coatesville credit. They are very good and they are well coached. We just got out of the game early and then Will got hurt and things did not go our way.”
Before Howard left the game, he capped a seven-play Whippet drive by going the final nine yards to make it a 35-7 game at halftime. Coatesville had taken a 35-0 lead when Ortega threaded his fourth touchdown pass of the night. This one was a 40-yard strike to Aaron Young, who easily beat his man for the score.
Coatesville reached the mercy rule early in the third period on the first drive of the second half. Coatesville roared down the field behind the arm of Ortega, and Young plowed in from a yard out to make it a 42-7 game, and the outcome was definitely not in doubt anymore.
“We feel our defense is very good,” Coatesville defensive lineman tone Holmes said. “We work very hard in practice and we take pride in our defense. right now, our offense and defense are clicking at a good rate. We are playing well.”
Coatesville put up 374 yards of total offense to 211 yards for the Whippets, many of which came in the second half. The Coatesville defense — which has allowed just 13 points per game — sacked Howard four times and were very impressive all night, and Matt Ortega talked about his underrated defense.
“We have been playing very good defense all year,” Ortega said. “And we have been giving up a lot of yards late in games when we have our second team in but the defense set the tone for us tonight on that first drive of the game.”
