SAN JOSE — Aiden Akery has never had a Thursday like this before.
He went to school at Willow Glen High knowing he’d play his first varsity game at quarterback against Lincoln-San Jose. What he didn’t know was that the school day would be cut short after a bomb threat was called in.
“It definitely catches you off guard,” Akery said. “We have no clue what’s going on until after we’re all cleared out.”
Eventually, San Jose Police gave the school the all clear, and the Rams’ first game of the season was back on. And though it started a little bit later than usual, Willow Glen made every minute count.
The Rams put forth an opening-night statement, dominating Lincoln 31-7 to claim a lopsided rivalry win in the season’s first game. Akery, a 6-foot, 180-pound junior, tossed two touchdown passes and rushed for another.
“Our coaches always talk about facing adversity and overcoming it,” Akery said. “So coaches do a really good job preparing us. Even with the threat itself, I mean, we’re still all ready to play. We want to play even more. The chance of not being able to play the game really sparked in us, and we just wanted to come out and do the best we could.”
Willow Glen (1-0) took the initial lead on Akery’s 24-yard touchdown pass to Gavin Ferraro, then doubled it on Chris Amann’s 9-yard rushing score. Amann caught a 13-yard TD from Akery just before the half to give the Rams a 21-0 advantage.
“If I was to say that this is exactly how we scripted it, I’d be lying,” said Willow Glen coach Oscar Caballero. “But no, I’m proud of our players, that they came out and played well. I mean, three phases of the game we played well in. Not to say that we were perfect. There were a couple things, quite a few actually, that we’ve got to clean up. But that’s something to look forward to in the weeks to come.”
The Rams tacked on an insurance score in the third quarter when Akery found the end zone on a 4-yard quarterback sneak, then completed their scoring with Aydin Babic’s 19-yard field goal early in the fourth. Dezario Burciaga added a late touchdown for Lincoln (0-1) on a 35-yard toss from quarterback Graeson Wagner.
“They showed up, and we didn’t,” said Lincoln coach Kevin Collins. “I would like to think we’re better than what the score was today, but we sure didn’t (show it). They were able to run the ball on us, and I thought we were going to be a little bit better against the run. I don’t know. We’ll just go back to the drawing board tomorrow and hopefully get ready for San Jose High next week and move on from there.”
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Willow Glen rushed for 206 yards on 39 carries, and 13 Rams carried the ball at least once. Akery finished the night completing 12 of 17 passes for 117 yards and added 87 yards rushing on 12 carries.
“We came in a little bit overconfident,” Collins said. “We got smashed in the mouth, and we never recovered. It’s a very emotional game. High school football is an emotional game. We didn’t step up when we needed to tonight. They did a good job, though, I got to give them all the credit. They kicked our butt.”
A nightmarish school day ended with a dream outcome on the field for Willow Glen.
“After we figured it out, we kind of figured, I mean, what’s next?” Akery said of the end of the school day. “I don’t know how to really explain it. We were just excited to play the game. And once we got the news that it was still going, we were all happy. We were down here as fast as we could.”
