Sanchez leads the way for Sunnyside

YAKIMA — Sunnyside junior James Sanchez hadn’t quite been himself on the football field since the second game of the season, when he’d suffered a mild concussion and a painful stinger in the Grizzlies’ one-sided loss to Big Nine Conference power and Class 4A-ranked Southridge.

Four weeks later, the junior two-way starter at wide receiver and safety was still looking for his breakout game, and everybody knew it.

Sunnyside's Victor Rios breaks away for a run during the first quarter against Davis Friday, October 10, 2008. (Andy Sawyer/Yakima Herald-Republic)

“Just yesterday,” Sanchez said Friday night, “‘my dad was saying, ‘You’ve been real quiet lately. You’ve got to get aggressive, you have to start making a name for yourself.’”

Consider it done.

Sanchez caught three touchdown passes in the Grizzlies’ 24-6 drumming of Davis at Zaepfel Stadium, snaring two of Andrew Daley’s three first-half TD aerials and then adding one from Michael Rodriguez in the second half as Sunnyside (2-4) continued its one-QB-per-half rotation.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, he also came up with a pair of interceptions and recovered a blocked punt.

“Oh my gosh,” Sanchez said, beaming after the game. “That was my first varsity touchdown” — and second and third, of course — “and my first interceptions. I had all my family here, my parents, my brother (Eric, a Grizzlies sophomore) was on the sideline, and we had other family from around, too. ”

They had plenty to cheer for, not only from Sanchez — “He’s a real good athlete,” noted Sunnyside coach Mark Marro — but from the Grizzlies’ defense. Davis (0-6) managed its first touchdown of the season late in the third period, but got it not off the Sunnyside defenders, but from their own.

Even after Davis freshman Charles McCray — a 6-foot-2, 235-pound specimen who looks like a star in the making — stripped the ball from a Grizzly runner and rumbled to the 2-yard-line to give his offense a very short field, the Pirates couldn’t push it across. Sunnyside actually moved them backward, getting the ball back on a fumble at the 15.

But on Sunnyside’s next offensive play, Rodriguez was slammed by a defensive lineman — probably McCray, who also blocked a punt and whom the Grizzlies simply couldn’t block — and lost the ball. In the scramble for it, Pirates linebacker Josh White-Elk got to it at the goal line for a touchdown.

That wasn’t nearly enough for the Pirates, though. Sunnyside had built an 18-0 halftime lead on Daley’s three TD passes, one of which went to Leo Cuellar. Even though he played only one short possession of the second half, he didn’t mind stepping aside for Rodriguez the rest of the way.

“He’s our senior quarterback, and I’m kind of the protégé, I guess you’d say,” said Daley, a sophomore. “He’s helping me get better, so I can do the best job of leading the team next year.”

Of course, he’s not doing a bad job this year.

Nor, on Friday night, was James Sanchez.