It was as if the collective wind was knocked out of Federal Way Memorial Stadium.
In the opening minutes of the second quarter, the Decatur Golden Gators football team was on the move, producing its best drive of the game during its eventual 33-7 loss to the Mar Vista (Calif.) Mariners on Friday, Sept. 9. Decatur fullback Jeremy Palaita took off for a 17-yard gain on an option run and was brought down hard by a duo of Mar Vista linebackers.
Palaita went to the ground holding his right leg, clearly in considerable pain. A source close to Decatur said the team’s training staff suspected a Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL) strain. If true, the injury would force Palaita to miss considerable time.
“It was tough to see,” Decatur coach Levi Suiaunoa said of the injury. “I think it’s something we were prepared for, though. We’re young, we’re moving guys around already, so it wasn’t like it was a tough challenge to deal with. We knew what we had to do, so we went with what we had.”
What the Gators had was backup fullback Joe’l Gilbert.
Gilbert, who moved over to fullback from the running back position, took over with 10 minutes, 50 seconds remaining in the second quarter, facing a 12-0 deficit.
It took Gilbert just one play to remind the stunned Decatur crowd that the Gators weren’t done yet.
Gilbert took the ball from under center, rolled left, found the hole the offensive line created, and sprinted 31-yards for a Golden Gator touchdown. Gilbert’s dramatic entrance brought the Decatur crowd, and his team, back to life, cutting the deficit to 12-6.
“Joe’l played extremely well with the position he was in,” Suiaunoa said. “He’s really a great defensive and special teams player for us, but to see him come in and make an impact immediately like that was what his teammates needed.”
Gilbert responded on the next drive with 17 rush yards and a first down before having to punt. But outside of the touchdown run, he wasn’t given many other opportunities to show what he can do going forward. Decatur’s defense struggled to contain Mar Vista’s power run game with team captain, Khalil Spruill.
By halftime, Spruill had 20 of the Mariners’ 26 points, and he’d rushed for 218 of Mar Vista’s 238 first-half rush yards.
Suiaunoa admitted the power and consistency of the Mar Vista run game took its toll on Decatur’s defense. In all, the Gators surrendered 338 rush yards and 33 passing yards.
“The defense really struggled, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “There’s no question those guys have a solid run game. We had some defensive breakdowns that caused us to miss some tackles that we should have made. But that’s all stuff that’s fixable and we’ll work on that.”
Despite being down 26-7 at halftime, Gilbert came out in the second half as sharp as the first.
He led Decatur on its opening drive with three straight run plays totaling 14 yards. In the fourth quarter, the junior showed yet another brilliant burst of speed when he took the ball from under center on the second play of the fourth quarter and rushed for a 14-yard pickup.
Suiaunoa said the Gators are deep in the midst of a rebuilding period. Entering his third year as head coach, Suiaunoa is 2-20.
Suiaunoa knows the program is struggling but thinks it’s nowhere near time for the Decatur faithful to panic. He said there’s still time for the program to catch its breath and turn an 0-2 start into a successful season.
“We’re 0-2, we know that,” Suiaunoa said. “It’s not time to panic. We did some good things and we did some bad things we can build on. We’ll take the weekend to put this one out of our mind, and focusing on winning going forward starts on Monday.”
