JJ Says: These Petaluma teams excelled despite the unusual season

It’s over. The strangest and, in many ways most remarkable high school sports season ever is finished. Young athletes have taken their masks and hand sanitizer and gone home. Graduated seniors have begun preparing for the next big step in their athletic careers or just stowed away the trials, tribulations and successes in their memory bank. Underclassmen are playing summer events and preparing for a “normal” season next school year.

Before we wave a not-so-tearful 2021 season farewell, we need to pay a final tribute to some truly remarkable successes that did not receive the recognition they deserved because of circumstances well beyond their control.

The most exciting chapter in the 2021 season was written by the Casa Grande baseball team. The Gauchos’ 15-3 record is exceptional, but what is really remarkable is the perfect 11-0 mark the Gauchos achieved in the Vine Valley Athletic League. The VVAL is a strong baseball league, and to play undefeated is pretty much the equivalent of pitching a perfect game.

The run came in Pete Sikora’s first real season as head coach and continued a remarkable legacy of baseball success for the Gauchos.

Actually, it was a good all-around season for Petaluma baseball. Across town at Petaluma High School, the Trojans were 13-5 and 9-3 against VVAL teams, with two of those losses coming against the Gauchos. St. Vincent, with half or more of its players participating in other sports, was 10-7 and 5-4 in its first year playing North Bay League teams. The Mustangs played very well once they got their pitching situation straightened out.

Boys basketball teams struggled with a late start as various agencies wrangled over whether to give them permission to play at all, but the girls exceeded expectations under the same conditions. The Petaluma girls, with only eight and sometimes seven players available, put together an 11-5 season and was 9-3 in VVAL play, a half step behind 8-2 (9-3 overall) American Canyon. Casa Grande’s girls, while just 5-6 overall, roared to the finish, winning their last four games and beating both American Canyon and Petaluma in the process.

It was hard to keep track of what was happening in the volleyball world, but it was certain that Casa Grande had a very good team that deserved a chance to see how good it could be in the North Coast Section playoffs that didn’t happen. The same could be said of the Casa Grande girls soccer team.

Casa Grande fielded what would have been two VVAL championship lacrosse teams. The Gaucho boys were an unbeaten 7-0 in league and 10-3 overall. The girls team was equally unblemished in league and 9-4 overall.

Casa Grande’s distance runners, among the best in the state, didn’t get a chance to show how good they could really be, while both Petaluma boys and girls teams far exceeded expectations with outstanding performances in dual meets.

The long-anticipated, but ultimately hastily designed, football season produced some exciting games as teams walked the line between competing and preparing for next fall.

The season was particularly satisfying for Petaluma’s Trojans. The Trojans played each of their five games with the intensity of a playoff, and had a lot of fun in the process.

After losing their first two games to Justin-Siena (7-8) and a monster Vintage team (57-0), the banged-up Trojans skipped a non-league game against Rancho Cotate to re-group and heal, and reeled off three satisfying victories in a row, defeating Napa (14-13), Sonoma Valley(18-14) and Casa Grande (20-14).

Casa Grande, even younger than the Trojans, had a hard time getting untracked, basically treating the season as preparation for a full season in the upcoming school year. The Gauchos played their way through the grinder of Vintage and Rancho Cotate, losing to both. They then bounced back to beat Sonoma Valley 34-24 and reached the high point of their season with a wild 49-46 win over American Canyon before finishing out with disappointing losses to Napa and Petaluma in the Egg Bowl.

St. Vincent did what it set out to accomplish, proving it could compete in the North Bay League Redwood. The Mustangs started with an eye-opener, upsetting UIkiah 24-7 in its first game. The rest of their season was competitive – a tough 25-20 loss to Analy; a 42-25 fall at Justin-Siena in a game that was a toss-up going in the final quarter and an 35-35 tie with El Molino in a game St. Vincent wanted to take into overtime, but El Molino was happy to escape. In its only home game, the Mustangs previewed what is ahead, giving everyone a chance to play in a 58-6 romp over Healdsburg.

That is it. The one-season high school year is completed. It was (pick one) strange, different, unusual, weird, but there were successes and those will be long remembered by the players who managed to succeed at a time when, for most, success was counted not so much in wins, but in games played.

(Contact John Jackson at johnie.jackson@arguscourier.com)