Menlo School football team trounces Aragon, honors fallen teammate in home opener

Beltran threw for three touchdowns, and ran for two more, as the Knights (2-0) relied on a tempo-rich passing attack to revel in their home opener. Menlo jumped out to a 26-0 lead in the first quarter, then responded to two straight Aragon (1-2) scores in the second by taking back control with a 2-yard scoring pass from Beltran to sophomore Bob Enright with 14 seconds remaining in the half.

“We’ve been practicing our tempo all week, so we were really prepared for this game,” Beltran said. “You can definitely tell it’s varsity. A lot of the players are a lot bigger and you can feel the hits. But we’ve been practicing really hard this week … so we came in with the mentality that we were going to play like we practiced.”

While Menlo scored on each of its first four possessions, the Aragon offense was something of a train wreck through the opening quarter. After the Dons lost their center midweek, they called up standout JV center Sergio Pineda. But after just three days of practice with the varsity squad, snapping the ball turned out to be a monumental task for Pineda and senior quarterback Daren Randolph.

“We worked out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — when we found out our center couldn’t play — and we had practiced a bit under center, but not a whole lot because he was pretty good,” Aragon head coach Steve Sell said. “But when you’re facing live bullets, it was hard. People who have never done it shouldn’t judge. I probably should have anticipated that and gone under center all week, but we didn’t know.”

On its first seven plays from scrimmage, Aragon fumbled four times. Only one — the last of the four, with Menlo already up 13-0 — went for a turnover. The result, though, was a wide-eyed Menlo offense ready to pounce, and an Aragon defense that was on the field for most of the first half on a sweltering Atherton afternoon.

“Our defense was out there all afternoon because our offense struggled so much,” Sell said. “So, they really hung in there against a really good offense.”

After Menlo’s defense forced a fumble-ridden three-and-out to open the game, Beltran and company went on the march. The junior quarterback hit paydirt with a 49-yard scoring pass to senior Chris D’alencon, and literally hit the dirt when he took a walloping hit upon releasing the pass from Aragon rushers Lloyd Walter and Albert Zheng.

Beltran bounced right back when Menlo retook possession five plays later, benefitting from prime field position after Enright broke a 21-yard punt return to the Aragon 14-yard line. Two plays later, Beltran connected with sophomore tight end Cort Halsey on a 6-yard out route to give the Knights a 13-0 lead.

The Dons fumbled away the snap on their next play, giving Menlo the ball at Aragon’s 32. Beltran promptly hit junior Carter Jung with a 29-yard pass. Then the quarterback dodged and danced his way to a 3-yard score to up the lead to 19-0.

Then came a barrage of yellow flags for Menlo unsportsmanlike conduct that would persist throughout the game, a great many of them for foul language on the field and from the sideline.

“I think the only anybody stopping us out here today, we were stopping ourselves with multiple procedure calls,” Menlo head coach Todd Smith said. “We were stopping ourselves. Our offense is complex, but at the same time it’s a lot of window dressing. I don’t think we called a number of different plays, but they were the right plays. It was really a case of us slowing ourselves down.”

But for all the f-bombs the Knights were hurling around, they were able to continue making just as much noise on the scoreboard.

After another Dons three-and-out, Menlo scored with 1:14 remaining in the first quarter on Beltran’s 3-yard touchdown pass to Enright. It was a clever play that saw Beltran roll out right. He initially tried a few pump fakes to create a running lane, but when an Aragon defender fell down leaving Enright all alone at the back of the end zone, Beltran simply lobbed one over the pursuing defenders for an easy score.

“At first I was just trying to pump fake to see if I had a lane open,” Beltran said. “He did a great job getting behind the receiver, and he was completely open, so I just threw it.”

Aragon made it interesting in the second quarter, though, thanks to a pair of interceptions leading to two straight touchdowns.

Dons safety Jack Fitzgerald picked off Beltran’s first throw of the second quarter, putting Aragon at the Menlo 25. On the following play, sophomore running back Jared Walsh broke a 25-yard scoring run, wriggling out of the grasp of several would-be tacklers at the line of scrimmage to spring free for the score.

Then near the end of the second quarter, with Menlo at its own 24, Lloyd wrestled the first interception of his varsity career and hauled for a pick-6 to close the deficit to 26-14 with 2:43 to go in the half. It was a delayed tight end route that Lloyd anticipated well, crashed the passing lane with a step on the intended receiver, and then snatched the ball away as both of them seemed to catch it simultaneously.

“I knew that I could undercut him and that the linemen were in the way so that the quarterback couldn’t see me,” Walter said. “When I came out of the break, I just looked for the ball and wanted to go get it, and basically became a receiver and just cut up the field.”

The score put some wind in the Dons’ sails, but only briefly.

“For sure,” Sell said. “It’s unfortunate, we didn’t have the best kickoff after that. And I think the pivotal thing was when they scored.”

Menlo answered back before the halftime break. Taking over at its own 46 proceeding Aragon’s attempt at an onside kick, Menlo marched 54 yards on eight plays, with Beltran completing passes of 4, 11, 11 and 8 yards, and mixing in two incompletions, while running all the other plays for 13 and 7 yards, the latter a glide to the end zone to put the Knights up 33-14 at the half.

The stars of the second half were the persistent yellow flags, making for constant dialogue between the officials and the Menlo sideline.

Beltran also emerged for one more scoring pass, this in the third quarter, connecting with Halsey for a 5-yard touchdown with 4:24 remaining in the period.

Menlo backup quarterback Will Murphy entered the game in the fourth quarter, and promptly rushed for gains of 7 and 9 yards. With Murphy wearing No. 15, it was appropriate to see him shine for two plays, as Menlo was honoring that very uniform number during its home opener.

The No. 15 was stenciled at the 15-yard line on both sides of the field in honor of Michael Enright, a Menlo student and junior-varsity football player who was killed in a car crash Jan. 18.

“He was a big part of our program and a beloved Knight,” Smith said. “And kids loved him.”