Head football coach John Walsh admits he didn’t know what to expect in his first spring in San Marcos.
Walsh didn’t know Del Valle was a town when he arrived either, and with COVID-19 intruding during the coach’s first offseason, he had to wait around to really see what his team would look like against the district. After the team fell short of some of its season goals, Walsh and the players knew what they needed to work on heading into the spring. After a month of practices and skill development, the Rattlers started to find some strengths and they appeared in the Purple and White Spring Game inside San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium on Thursday.
Walsh’s Purple team knocked off quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator Lee Vallejo’s White squad 24-23 after an eventful close to spring workouts. The whole time they focused on having fun after evaluations but they still had to find time to talk a little smack to each other.
“The evaluations are over. You know, when we get to the spring game week it's just about having fun, making sure we still compete and do things right,” Walsh said. “It was my week to trash talk and there's no better person to trash talk to than Coach Vallejo, so I had a fun week.”
A week of bad weather halted some of the plans in the area and with storms brewing, the Purple and White didn’t know if they would even be able to take the field. Plans of rescheduling the game had already taken effect, but the sun shined as bright as Zach Decker's interception on the second play of the game, taking the ball all the way down to the 10-yard line.
The White defense held strong, forcing Purple to kick a field goal. The same result came about on White’s offensive drive, tying the score at 3-3. Purple had 1:55 left in the first period when they traveled down the field, starting with a 19-yard rush by running back Jake Rodriguez-Scholz. Purple quarterback D.J. Cano found a way to make big plays with a 56-yard touchdown and the first score of the game for them.
TOUCHDOWN: @KutterGage1 finds Joel Sandavol for an 11 yard touchdown pass to tie the score.
— DeShaun Hartley (@DeShaunHartley) May 20, 2021
Purple 10
White 10@smdrsports pic.twitter.com/huuD5xIwRI
Starting sophomore quarterback Isaiah DeLeon, who played for both sides, led the White team down the field on the last drive, ending with a 41-yard score to cut into Purple’s lead, 24-23. Walsh told Vallejo to go for two and end it. Malik Gordon tried to get going horizontally on a jet sweep to the right, but the defense swarmed him right in front of the goal line, ending the game with Purple on top. DeLeon talked about what it was like to hit the field against everyone and how much progress the Rattlers made since the end of last year.
“Really for all of us, it’s just been really good to get back out here and compete with each other,” DeLeon said. “I've seen a lot of growth, whether it's me or everybody else on the team getting bigger, faster, stronger and once we get into the season, we can be scary.”
The connection between DeLeon and his receiving core is still growing and all of his receivers have big-play ability. He liked how they were playing in the game.
“I thought we did a great job getting separation. We were getting guys open early and we were able to get the ball out quick and that's really good,” DeLeon said. “And then in the run game, we got a good run game with great running backs, so that helps out in the pass game a lot.”
San Marcos will now enter the summer workout period with strength and conditioning coach Carl Thompson. But Walsh was very pleased with his team over the spring period and now wants his team to focus on getting stronger if they want to be successful in 6A.
“It’s my 16th year of being a head coach, so it was like the others,” Walsh said. “We made sure we got better, we made sure we got a lot of rest, we didn't overwork them. And then we did lose a few, we lost a couple. We got an ACL and we got a shoulder injury that we lost guys that were gonna help us, so that’s not good. But man, I'm really pleased and compared to the other (years), it's right on par. We got better and we had a good time doing it.”
