By the time the final penalty flag finally fell to the Corbus Field turf Thursday night, Bethel and ELITE high schools looked all the world like they were playing in a laundromat.
Bethel High quarterback Kylan McNeal ignored all the cloth. All the senior saw was the end zone.
McNeal rushed for five touchdowns and 110 yards and gained another 137 in the air en route to the Jaguars’ 37-12 victory over their cross town rivals.
“He improved from last week,” Bethel head coach Gary Lee said. “He was a little frazzled and tried to do too much. This week he relaxed, took over the game and started becoming a leader on the field.”
August and September have not been kind to the Bethel program, losers of seven straight early-season games since 2023.
Lee was happy to get in the win column early this season. Last year the Jaguars made the postseason despite an 0-7 start.
“We had a horrible first half, and we weren’t playing solid football,” Lee said. “Penalties, just careless mistakes, careless football, not playing defense. Then we came out in the second half and started playing real football.”
So what did Lee tell the Jaguars in the locker room at half time?
“Uh, some things I can’t say here,” Lee joked. “Pretty much it was remembering who we are. At the end of the day, cut out all the noise. When we’re out there on the field, it’s only us. Nobody else. Just the coaches and the players. We need to stop playing selfish and fight together as a team and in the second half they showed it.”
Elite quarterback, Ma’Kai Little, and D’Sir Tyler jump over Bethel’s Kevin Fuentes as Fuentes recovers a fumbled snap during the Jaguars’ 34-12 win on Thursday in Vallejo. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)
The defense showed up early and often in the contest, pressuring ELITE into eight fumbles off the snap. Lee said it was a combination of pressure and ELITE having a young team.
“It was a little bit of both,” Lee said. “Some part of ELITE having some bad plays on their end and us capitalizing on it.”
Bethel took an early 7-0 lead in the first quarter when Julian Reyes raced for 21 yards to set up a 1-yard score by McNeal.
In the second quarter McNeal struck again, this time through the air with a 36-yard completion to Dennis Walton III to set up the Jaguars near the red zone. Three plays later McNeal scrambled for a 31-yard rush for a touchdown to make it 13-0 in the Jaguars’ favor.
McNeal had another big pass completion later in the second quarter, a 66-yarder to Donovan Williams to put Bethel inside the 10-yard line. McNeal completed a 10-yard pass to Jermeer Lee-Hicks that set up a 1-yard touchdown run by McNeal for a 21-0 lead.
Meanwhile, with the flags flying, the second quarter lasted nearly an hour and 15 minutes. ELITE scored at the end of the period on a Charles Foreman 8-yard pass thrown by Ma’Kai Little.
The touchdown caused confusion as it appeared the score came after numerous whistles by the officials were called, leaving Foreman all alone by himself. The drive also came in a series in which Bethel had three unsportsmanlike penalties called by them, moving the ball up 45 yards.
It also made for an animated Lee in the locker room.
“He was fired up a lot,” McNeal said. “He wasn’t satisfied. He knew that was a team we were supposed to beat, so we had to flip the switch in the second half.”
McNeal keyed the turnaround, scoring on runs of 59 and 5 yards in the third quarter.
“I just felt like we had to get the job done,” McNeal said. “After a while I knew (ELITE) couldn’t catch me.”
Meanwhile, ELITE fell to 0-2 — a daunting challenge for head coach Patrick Little’s squad of just five seniors and a bevy of freshmen and sophomores.
“We are just young,” Little said. “We start six or seven freshmen. When we have a young program we have to take our lumps. When you have young players, you make young mistakes. When you’re young, the best way to learn is by playing.
“Our whole thing is we had a tough preseason so we can get ready for league. This will help us when we are playing Division 7 games against teams like us as many big schools.”
ELITE’s next game is Saturday, Sept. 13 against Vallejo High at Corbus Field with a 6 p.m. scheduled start, while Bethel plays at Corbus Field on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. with a matchup against Pinole Valley.