Coronado’s run game too much for Chaparral

The beauty of the double-wing offense is that after a while, the opposing defense wears down.

Coronado used the offense to near perfection Thursday.

The Cougars ran for 297 yards and ran away with a 22-9 road victory at Chaparral.

“It is set up to keep everyone on their heels,” senior Semaj Bolin said. “We can run through you or around you.”

Thursday night, the Cougars (4-5, 2-2 Southeast) went through the Cowboys defense mostly through the use of their fullbacks. Vinny Gelsone had 60 yards on nine carries, including a 21-yard scoring run midway through the second quarter. Fellow fullback Jordan Marzka had 67 yards on eight carries.

“Those fullback runs just killed us,” Chaparral coach Don Willis said. “When they broke through, we kept on trying to tackle them high, and they would go for some more yards. They had a lot of yards after contact.”

Chaparral’s Steve Torres returned a fumble 60 yards for a score to open things in the first. After Bolin returned the ensuing kickoff 94 yards, the Cowboys briefly took back the lead at the end of the first quarter on Dennis Perez’s 25-yard field goal, making it 9-7 with 34 seconds left in the first.

Gelsone’s scoring run put Coronado back up 14-9, but the Cougars couldn’t put Chaparral away. The Cowboys (4-4, 1-3) hung tough, but wore down against Coronado’s running game, which included Bolin (nine carries, 66 yards) and Trey Goughnour (eight carries, 59 yards) cutting around the corners.

Bolin scored on a 26-yard run off a sweep with 6:18 left in the fourth quarter. Ethan Lucero’s 2-point conversion pass to Tyrell Hunt, put the Cougars up 22-9.

Chaparral struggled to find much rhythm offensively against a Cougars squad looking to rebound from a rough couple of weeks.

“We had a really bad week against Basic last time,” Cougars coach Terry Riddle said. “The defense felt it owed our coordinator a good performance. That was pretty much pure effort on their part in this game.”