THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Whitney High School Athletics

Following the resignation of Whitney High football head coach Paul Doherty a week before the season opener, the Wildcats rolled into Davis and rolled over the Blue Devils 50-28 Friday. Jesse Armas, line coach and nine-year assistant coach at Whitney, filled the vacancy as interim head coach. In spite of the scramble it took to keep the program rolling, the ‘Cats and company pulled it together. “(That) week has definitely been a challenge for me, being an offensive line coach, because usually the offensive line is off in a corner doing their own stuff while Doherty would be doing his,” said Armas, prior to the Davis game. “[T]he boys have been awesome. They’ve been really good as far as taking me in; … it’s their team and they just need to play as hard as they possibly can.” And that the Wildcats did. Whitney quarterback Preston Eklund stung Davis with a 1-yard pass to wide receiver Preston Durelle to open the scoring. After defensive end Dagne’ Buck fell on a Blue Devils’ fumble, Eklund then rifled a 19-yard TD pass to Mark Clark and all was well – with the exception of a few yellow flags during the contest. “The main thing was, we had too many penalties. That’s one of our goals this week is to clean that up,” Armas said. “We had some false starts, a couple holding penalties. Hopefully we can clean that up a little bit.” Eklund connected with Clark and Nick Eaton for two more passing scores and the senior quarterback ran for one. Jason Sanchez also powered into the end zone for two scores and kicker Jayden Patel hung a 23-yard field goal on the board. On defense, Zach Chaffin also recovered a fumble and Nathan Sanchez picked off a pass and nearly returned it to the house. “First game jitters for me, for the kids, but they executed awesome,” Armas said. “I thought Preston Eklund and I and the rest of the coaches did a really good job of kind of adjusting to what Davis was doing.” Next step before the Sept. 8 Quarry Bowl will be playing host to Granite Bay Friday at Wildcat Stadium 7:30 p.m. The Grizzlies defeated Jesuit 31-21 last week.

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Whitney High School Athletics

WHITNEY ROLLS OVER DAVIS 50-28 IN SEASON OPENER

JIM LINSDAU

Placer Herald | 8/31/2017

PHOTO CREDIT: Whitney High School Athletics