By Rick Assad
As losses go, this was a tough pill to swallow for the Burbank High football team.
After scoring three touchdowns in the second half and overtime including junior Ezekiel Alvarez’s tally in the extra session that gave the Bulldogs a 35-28 lead, host Dos Pueblos answered right back and added a two-point conversion for a 36-35 victory in the season opener on Friday night.
Burbank coach Adam Colman was asked if he should have gone for the two-point conversion.
“Absolutely not. When you have the ball first and score in overtime, you have to kick it,” he said. “Then just trust your defense to get a stop on the drive or the two-point.”
The Bulldogs traveled nearly 100 miles to Goleta and came within a whisker of winning and that’s the good news, but there will be better days for this young club.
“The kids showed a ton of grit. It’s a core value of ours that makes me proud as a coach,” Colman said. “We made a lot of mistakes. But we will learn from those. Sometimes it’s the ones that hurt the most that give you the motivation to push yourself and be better than you were before.”
Colman knows there is a great deal of youth on this team and that they have to work each day and each week in order to get better.
“We are a young team and we learned a lot about ourselves tonight,” he said. “Hopefully it is a loss that lights a fire under the team going forward.”
Junior quarterback Daniel Zacariaz had an impressive outing and then some after scoring a touchdown with 4:20 left in the third quarter.
On the next play, the game was knotted at 28-28 when sophomore running back Noah May-Vaughn carried the ball into the end zone on a two-point conversion.
The score at halftime had the Chargers ahead 21-13 but after the intermission the Bulldogs scored 22 points.
The nonleague game began with Dos Pueblos taking a 7-0 lead with 3:56 left in the first quarter.
Zacariaz and senior wide receiver Sean Garrett then evened it at 7-7 when the pair connected on a 40-yard scoring play.
The Chargers then scored two touchdowns, including a 47-yard scoring pass with 10:32 left in the second quarter, while the Bulldogs saw junior running back Jacob Mendieta score with 20 seconds left in the second period.
When junior running back Joseph Caballero scored with 5:40 left in the third period, the Bulldogs came within 28-20.
Burbank will next play Santa Fe at Santa Fe Springs in a nonleague game Friday night at 7 p.m.
