Head coach Larry Muir said his Valencia Vikings had to be at their best to beat the Lakewood Lancers on Friday, but that didn’t happen.
Valencia (6-5) simply had no answer for a potent Lakewood (7-4) offense on Friday in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs, falling 50-26 in an early playoff exit.
“Defensively, we struggled. We struggled,” Muir said. “And we knew they were good, and that’s a really good football team. We didn’t play at our best, but that’s a tough lesson to learn, and hopefully our young guys learn a lesson from that in terms of how they got to prepare and what it takes to play teams like that.”
It’s the third straight season that Valencia has been knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.
Lakewood racked up 356 yards of offense en route to ending the Vikings’ season with a victory Friday night at Valencia High School’s Dr. Paul A. Priesz Stadium.
Senior running backs Josiah Apisala and Nytrell Miller combined for 147 yards rushing for Lakewood. Apisala opened the scoring with a 4-yard run in the first quarter before Miller got the Lancers’ third score from the same distance to close the frame.
“We didn’t do well against their physicality. We didn’t respond very well for that,” Muir said. “They had their way up front a little bit, and that’s unfortunate to get at this point in the season. You’ve got to be strong up front, because in the playoffs, everybody’s very, very evenly matched.”
Lakewood senior quarterback Kade Casillas was responsible for three touchdowns, running in one in the first half before hitting junior tight end Caleb Tafua for two TDs in the second half.
It was somewhat of a back-and-forth battle in the first half, and for part of the second half, before Lakewood pulled away.
Junior Brian Bonner got Valencia on the board after Lakewood’s first score with a 61-yard bolt down the left sideline. Junior quarterback Brady Bretthauer hit sophomore Nico Funez for a 15-yard TD midway through the second quarter to cut the deficit in half, but senior Cecil Xavier Smith took the ensuing kickoff to the house to make it a 28-14 lead at the break.
There was another long kickoff return in the second half that Muir said can’t happen in the playoffs.
“It was the mistakes (that) we can’t overcome,” Muir said. “We made so many mistakes in the special teams and in different parts up front that, again, in the playoffs, you can’t overcome those things.”
Valencia senior Nick Seymour ran for two touchdowns in his final football game as a Viking. He racked up 56 rushing yards and one catch for 12 yards.
Muir said he was one of those seniors who left everything on the field despite the result going against the Vikings.
“It’s the hardest thing for every senior is that this ends, it’s like falling off a cliff,” Muir said. “That becomes the hard thing, and guys like Nick Seymour who left it out on the field, all the way to the very last play, your heart goes out to him, and the mark that he’s made on the program, it’ll have ripple effects years down the line.”
The Vikings trailed by just eight midway through the third quarter after taking up seven minutes on the opening drive of the second half. But the Lancers put up 22 unanswered to seal the victory.
“I felt good about the opening drive in the second half,” Muir said. “We held onto the ball for a long time, and we wanted to do that. We wanted to slow the game down and still put points up on the board. And we cut it to what we wanted to, then I think that we were like, ‘Hey, we’re in a good spot now. Gave ourselves a chance.’”
Bonner led Valencia with 105 rushing yards. Bretthauer had 46 passing yards on just nine attempts, adding 38 yards rushing.
Casillas had 179 passing yards for Lakewood, hitting Tafua five times for 94 yards. Smith had two catches for 48 yards.
A late hit in the first half saw Casillas exit the game for a brief period after sustaining what appeared to be a left knee injury, but he came back looking strong and did not leave until the game was out of reach in the fourth quarter.
“We knew they were going to cause problems,” Muir said. “The quarterback is a runner and does a really good job. He does great job and leads that offense. The running back (Apisala), we knew he was a load, and the tight end. You have all those different weapons, and you have all those different guys, that becomes tough.”
It wasn’t the ending that Valencia wanted, but it came on the back of a six-game winning streak to end the regular season and a second consecutive Foothill League title.
“You got to step away and look at the bigger picture,” Muir said. “In the big picture, it is a pretty amazing journey that these guys went through. We were really struggling to begin the year, and it was a testament to these guys in leadership of some of the seniors in terms of just getting us back on track.”
Muir said he expects his team to come back next year, led by Bretthauer and Bonner in their senior campaigns, and compete again for glory.
