Bonita scores 39 in the second half to run past Diamond Ranch

What started out as a slow homecoming turned into a big dance, as the Bonita High School football team rallied to score 39 unanswered points against Diamond Ranch.

Junior Running back Ivan Wilson-Bey led the resurgence in the first half with an 8-yard touchdown run that was crucial to the momentum gain in the second half. The scoring drive was made possible by a perfectly-timed botched punt by Diamond Ranch that was recovered by senior Caleb Franzen.

Wilson-Bey ended up rushing for 119 yards and had two touchdowns, including a 52-yard run in the third quarter.

“[I was thinking] ‘Just gotta get the first down’, that’s my first thing,” Wilson-Bey said. “[Then] find the hole, and then I saw an opening and just took it and tried to run.”

Bonita’s offense got a healthy dose of youth as sophomore wide receiver Kevin Bullock re-entered the lineup after suffering from a shoulder injury after week one. Bullock had seven receptions that totaled 109 yards with a 60-yard touchdown reception in the third and an interception in the first. His interception was the only notable play in the quiet first.

The offense was only saving their best for the end of the second quarter and the entire second half.

Defense was able to save the beginning of the game by only holding Diamond Ranch to two touchdowns, including two blocked kicks.

Senior linebacker Jake San Miguel awaits at the line of scrimmage.

Sophomore quarterback J.P. Andrade was able to find his rhythm and capitalized on the weak secondary.

Andrade commented, “We saw a lot of mismatches in their secondary so we wanted to take it slow. So we had one of our top receivers, we have Adrian [Bejarano] who’s stepping up, and a lot of receivers that are stepping up. So we saw a lot of mismatches in their secondary so we wanted to take that advantage.”

It also helped that Andrade’s favorite target of the night, Bullock, was his go-to from freshman year and his Pop Warner teammate since seventh grade.

The team was able to move past their early mistakes and loss of senior tight end Logan Zylstra but they suffered an early exit from senior star running back E.J. Pasowicz.

Coach Aguilar said, “It was definitely tough to lose [Zylstra] last week, we talked about when we lost [Zylstra] last week [at Buena], it was 7-7, and we ended up losing that game by a lot more. Today, what happened to [Pasowicz], we really came together and said, ‘We can’t let this happen today what happened last week.’… a lot of our big guys are out but we emphasized stepping up and playing as a team and making sacrifices for each other and really making a team effort and we did that tonight.”

And team wins are the best wins.