Waubonsie goes coconuts for win
Waubonsie Valley may have discovered a new secret weapon in Friday’s 54-28 nonconference win at Oswego: it’s called coconut water.
There’s no doubt that on a hot, humid night when at least half a dozen players needed to be helped off the field with leg cramps the coconut water paid dividends for Waubonsie’s Austin Guido. The senior running back scored a personal-best 5 touchdowns, ran for 213 yards and even stepped in to snap on an extra-point attempt because the regular snapper was sidelined with cramps.
“I knew it was going to be hot so I was drinking water all week, had two big bottles of coconut water before the game and ate a lot of bananas, so I didn’t cramp up,” Guido said.
Guido looked freshest with three minutes to play when he sprinted 88 yards around a tiring Oswego (1-1) defense for his final TD. It put an explosive capper on a game that started out looking like it would be a grind-it-out grudge match before all sorts of offensive pyrotechnics erupted.
The Warriors (2-0) rolled up 546 total yards, 355 on the ground, and 191 through the air from quarterback Dylan Warden on only 7 completions, two of which were scoring plays of 44 yards to Guido and 52 yards to Christian Gibbs.
“When teams are putting nine, 10, 11 men in the box, making it sort of impossible to run, the play-action was working,” said Waubonsie coach Paul Murphy. “If you want to play 11 at the line of scrimmage, we’ll take what you’re giving us and we took advantage of what they were giving us.”
The Warriors opened the game with an 82-yard, 12-play scoring drive capped by Guido’s 2-yard sweep. That was matched by Oswego’s 11-play, 63-yard march with Brett Wainwright’s 13-yard TD toss to Jack Kwiatkowski on fourth down tied the score at 7-7. That score was the first of three in just 73 seconds as Waubonsie answered with Demario Webb’s 20-yard run, and Oswego came right back with Mickeel Stewart’s 65-yard burst for a 14-13 lead.
Waubonsie assumed a 19-14 halftime lead courtesy of Guido’s TD catch before taking firm control in the third quarter after Jake Tobiason’s recovery of a fumbled punt at the Oswego 7 set up Guido’s third TD of the night. After Oswego pulled within 26-21 on Bryce Holm’s 1-yard plunge, Warden found Gibbs for his score and Guido followed with a 41-yard trek to the end zone for a 39-21 lead early in the fourth quarter. Kwiatkowski caught a 37-yard scoring pass from Wainwright before Guido’s 88-yard run and Webb’s 14-yard trip to paydirt closed the scoring.
“This is our second year in a row starting 2-0 and we’ve got to keep it going, keep working on getting better,” Guido said. “These seniors have been waiting for this season a long time.”