DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
ELSA — Who are they? Well, pretty freaking good, first and foremost.
Coming into Friday’s Monitor Game of the Week showdown against Edinburg Vela, Edcouch-Elsa coach Joe Marichalar demanded that his team find its identity against the SaberCats. He didn’t care about the marquee matchup or any other subplot. Marichalar wanted to find out who and what his team is, and the Yellowjackets gave him answers.
“I saw my slot receiver run an out route and the corner(back) went with him,” Aguinaga said. “Found J.J. open.”
The game was tied at 21 well into the fourth quarter before Robert Guerra’s one-yard run with 5:33 left gave Vela a 28-21 lead.
But E-E receiver A.J. Rodriguez took the ensuing kickoff 91 yards for a score before Vela’s Jonathan Navarro retrieved the blocked extra point and returned it for two points and a 30-27 advantage.
The game remained that way until Vela turned the ball over on downs with 1:13 left at E-E’s 37-yard line. That’s when Aguinaga produced the game-winning drive, either with his legs or timely throws to Flores and Rodriguez.
“We’ve been here before, so a game like this is not a surprise to us,” said Aguinaga, who ran for 216 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries and completed 12 of 27 passes for 179 yards and three TDs. “Our coaches put us in tough situations every day at practice. We just came out there and played our style of football.”
On the final play, from Vela’s 13-yard line, Aguinaga scrambled and fired a rocket toward a double crossing route between Rodriguez and Flores.
“The defense was playing back, and I actually thought that ball was going to A.J,” said Flores, who caught eight passes for 115 yards and three TDs. “But I’m a ballhog, so if I see the ball I’m going to go get it. I just tried to make a play for my ball.”
It was a telling win for an Edcouch-Elsa (1-1) team that entered this week with a lot of internal questions after last week’s 50-40 loss at Los Fresnos.
“Who are we? We’re the team that fights,” Marichalar said. “We’re the team that doesn’t know how to quit, and that’s going to carry us all the way through this season.”
Guerra, named Dave Campbell’s Mr. Texas Football Player of the Week earlier Friday after scoring a Valley-record nine touchdowns last week at Victoria East, rushed for 190 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries. He also had a receiving touchdown.
But Vela’s true star Friday was quarterback Nathan Garcia, who ran 16 times for 217 yards and a TD while completing 9 of 13 passes for 123 yards and two TDs. But he was ejected with 2:20 left on Vela’s final drive for apparently shoving a Yellowjacket player.
In all, there were three ejections and a combined 33 penalties between the two teams.
“We knew it was going to be a physical ballgame,” Vela coach Michael Salinas said. “We fired our best shot and just came up a little bit short tonight. You have to give credit to Edcouch-Elsa. They made the play at the end of the ballgame and we didn’t.”
In all, the Yellowjackets compiled 467 total yards to 495 for Vela.
“We found who we were. We stuck together through all the adversity,” Rodriguez said. “We were down late and still won.
“A game like this says a lot. and we showed, to everybody else and ourselves, that we’re one of the best teams in the Valley.”