MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Middletown coach Bill Foltmer was sitting in his office on Friday afternoon, a few hours before his team kicked off its season against Salesian, when someone asked him what his Mustangs had to do to have a shot at upsetting the visitors from Richmond, who were pulling into town with a 22-game win streak and a No. 2 North Coast Section Div IV ranking.
“We have to score points,” he said, meaning they’d have to score a bunch of points to keep pace with The Pride’s high-octane offense.
“In the past, whenever we’ve played them, we had to score points,” Foltmer said. “It’s never a defensive battle with them.”
Until later that evening, at least, when the large crowd that came to see some offensive fireworks instead witnessed a battle between two defenses that surrendered plenty of yards, but precious few points.
Trailing 3-0 at the half, Salesian finally got into the end zone on Michael Page’s 1-yard run in the third quarter, which held up for a very strange 7-3 victory.
Strange because Page finished with 340 yards rushing in 27 carries as Salesian piled up the yardage in posting its 23rd straight win, but when it came to scoring points, they didn’t add up to much.
But one touchdown was all The Pride needed on a night when the Mustangs were held to a second-quarter Tyler Drew field goal of 22 yards.
“We had a few opportunities on offense, but we just couldn’t take advantage of them,” Foltmer said after the game, sitting in the same chair he occupied a few hours earlier.
As for the Mustangs’ defense, who would have figured it could hold Salesian to a single touchdown?
Here’s a team that out-scored opponents by an average of 30 points a game last year en route to its second straight NCS Div. IV title, and opened last week with a 39-6 win over De Anza.
“I thought our defense played very well. They gained some yards on us but a lot of them were at the end of the half, and they turned the ball over to us on a couple of fumbles, which helped,” Foltmer said.
Middletown also had some success moving the ball, but its 201 yards of offense was less than half of Salesian’s total.
Ben Pike completed 13 of 23 passes for 88 yards and the Mustangs added 102 yards on the ground, led by Drew’s 59 yards in nine carries. But Salesian protected its end zone whenever the Mustangs got within striking distance.
Foltmer was left wondering what it all meant.
“It takes a few games before you get a sense of how good you are or how good your opponent was,” he said. “We’ll know a lot more after a couple of more games.”
Rich Mellott can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .