Vikings don’t like View
Early season mistakes are one thing, but by Friday night’s third game of the season, Coeur d’Alene head coach Shawn Amos said he was expecting a lot fewer miscues.
The Vikings, however, ran into a tough non-league opponent in Mountain View of Meridian and never quite got it going in a 21-9 loss to the Mavericks.
“I think the effort was there, but we’re still making stupid mistakes,” Amos said of the loss, in which his charges were only able to manage 148 yards of total offense against a formidable Mountain View defensive line. “We’re not making things happen when we need to make them happen – we’re giving up the big play and we need to make some big plays.
“You can’t struggle along the whole time – eventually you have to make something happen, and we’re not doing that right now.”
Then there was that brick wall on the other side of the ball.
“Their defensive line dominated us,” Amos said of the Mavericks (2-0), who drubbed 4A Skyview 58-0 a week ago. “We couldn’t run the ball anywhere we tried, every different angle, and they just dominated us.
“And then we missed tackles on defense – you do those two things, and you lose football games.”
Coeur d’Alene (1-2) got on the board first, capitalizing on a Kyle Womeldorff interception, the Vikings’ only takeaway of the game at the end of a scoreless first quarter.
Womeldorff picked junior quarterback Zane Hibbard at the Mavs 30 before senior wideout Johnny Carlson, lined up at quarterback, took it in around left end from 3 yards out five plays later. The Vikings, however, missed the point after.
Hibbard found 6-3, 210-pound senior tight end Camden Mendiola twice for touchdowns – from 18 yards out on a blown coverage in the waning minutes of the first half and from 7 yards out midway through the third quarter to put Mountain View on top 14-6.
Robbie Astin’s 21-yard field goal pulled CdA within striking distance at 14-9 three minutes into the fourth quarter.
But the Mavericks went on a long drive, aided by a Vikings offside on a third-and-4 and a 34-yard fade route from Hibbard to senior wideout Daniel Micheletti. Hibbard took it in himself from 4 yards out to cap the scoring.
The loss left Amos looking for answers.
“Offensively, we’ve got to put some more points on the board,” Amos said. “We’ve got to score some points, and things don’t get any easier on us from here on out.”
First-year Mountain View head coach Judd Benedick, an assistant for five years at Centennial High, complimented Coeur d’Alene and admitted it was the first time he’d seen his team struggle.
“It’s tough, on a road trip, to come all the way up here and play as well as you’d like,” Benedick said. “You’re battling long bus trips and stuff like that.
“And (Coeur d’Alene) is a good team – I think they’ve got a lot of talent.”
He said he thought it was important to have his team face a test heading into next week’s battle with his old school.
“To come all the way up here and face some adversity, and overcome it, it’s big,” Benedick said. “I was happy with that – there was adversity, and I didn’t know how we’d respond to it, because last week there wasn’t any.
“It’s nice to know that you can be in a game and come out of it on top.”