Bautista's arm carries Northwood past El Modena for first victory
ORANGE - After two disappointing weeks to open the season, the Northwood football team left the field at El Modena High with something finally to smile about.
Behind the passing of quarterback Ricky Bautista, the Timberwolves (1-2) earned their first victory, defeating the host Vanguards (2-2), 19-7, Thursday night in a nonleague game.
Bautista completed 24 of 36 passes for 353 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
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He opened the scoring with a 64-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. In the second quarter he had a 24-yard touchdown pass to Alex King and then a 45-yard touchdown strike to King in the third quarter.
King finished with eight receptions with for 153 yards. Tyler Zorn had 11 catches for 119 yards.
“We been really close the last couple of weeks,” Northwood coach Rick Curtis said. “To finally get our first victory of the year has the kids excited.
“We didn’t play our best game, but I have to hand it to El Modena. They came out played hard. Our defense played really well tonight and we were please with that.”
The Timberwolves opened the season with a loss to Gahr of Cerritos, 24-22. They followed that with a 30-29 loss to Laguna Hills on a last-second field goal last week.
“That was a tough one for everybody,” Curtis said of last week’s loss. “And to come back on a Thursday … I think offensively, we relaxed a little bit and our timing was off and we didn’t execute like we did last week.
“The defense came to hit tonight and gang-tackled like we were looking for and that was a good thing to see.”
Northwood held El Modena scoreless until the fourth quarter, when Joseph Armenta picked up a fumble from his teammate Jordan Brown and raced 40 yards for the score with 7:15 left in the game.
El Modena defeated Northwood last year, 21-14.
Northwood will visit Estancia next Thursday.
El Modena has a bye week next week. The Vanguards will begin Century League play, Oct. 6 against Villa Park.
