Seth Miguel tossed five touchdown passes, Aidan Azevedo, Cole Bailey and Justin Barros each had a pair of scores and the No. 2 Hilmar High football team advanced to their third straight Sac-Joaquin Section Division-VI semifinal game after defeating No. 7 Bear River on Friday night, 49-17.
“First of all, I was really concerned about our team because we really just played three games in six weeks and were coming off that bye, and I didn’t know how good we would be with so much time off,” said Hilmar head coach Frank Marques. “But the kids responded and we did a great job defensively, and then offensively… combination of a great team win.”
Hilmar tallied 480 yards of total offense while the defense stymied Bear River. BR finished the game with just 187 yards on offense with 166 coming through the air.
Aiden Azevedo caught four passes for 117 yards and two touchdowns. Justin Barros finished the game with eight catches for 140 yards and had a rushing and receiving touchdown.
Cole Bailey finished with two rushing touchdowns and Steven Silva had a team-high 83 yards rushing on 10 carries.
The game was really over before it started—or so that is how it looked and went.
Hilmar scored on their first six possessions of the game and went up 42-10 at halftime.
On their opening drive, Hilmar marched down the field for a 10-play scoring drive that ended with a Cole Bailey three-yard run to make it 7-0 with 9:10 left.
Seth Miguel found Azevedo for the first of two touchdowns on a 56-yard toss that extended the lead to 14-0 with 6:06 left in the first.
Bailey ran it in from six-yards out with 11:57 left in the second and the lead was now 21-3, after BR got a 32-yard field goal with 4:11 left in the first quarter.
Azevedo caught the fourth touchdown for Hilmar after a 27-yard pass from Miguel with 9:01 left till halftime and a 28-3 lead.
They made it 35-3 after Justin Barros scored his first of two touchdowns, running it in from 14-yards out.
BR notched their only touchdown of the first half with 1:26 left till the second quarter ended and the score read 35-10.
Miguel tossed his fourth touchdown pass of the game just before halftime after he found Barros for a 27-yard strike and the halftime score was 42-10.
Miguel found Barros for his fifth touchdown of the game on a 37-yard strike to make it 49-10.
BR scored with Hilmar’s back-ups in and a running clock of 3:35 to end it 49-17.
“Beating a team like that, they are such a great and honorable program, I knew we were facing a quality program, and that is a good feather in your cap, a really good team,” said Marques. “I thought we were very prepared. I thought defensively we did a great job cause their No. 4 came back and we were worried about him being back healthy… so we saw what they did last week so we were really concerned about them. Defensive staff did a great job, just a great team effort and I am very proud of them.”
Hilmar is now 10-1 overall and have won five straight games.
No. 2 Hilmar will next host No. 3 Ripon Christian, a rematch of last year’s semifinal, at 7 p.m. Friday.
