A young Compton High flag football team is in uncharted territory for their program, but the Tarbabes showed they can be resilient when things don’t go their way.
After throwing an interception on the second play of the game and falling into an early 7-0 hole against the visiting Claremont Wolfpack, things could have gone wrong for Compton. But the hosts settled in, scoring 25 unanswered points the rest of the half on their way to a comfortable 25-13 victory in the second round of the CIF-SS Division 4 playoffs.
“Honestly, I thought it was Lakewood all over again,” said Compton head coach Jason Carreras, referencing Compton’s upset loss to end the regular season. “I thought our warm up was good, and then I started seeing a little lack of focus again. And it was time to get them locked back in. So there’s a couple times I called timeouts when I didn’t need to, but it was more to get them really focused, because when we’re focused, we’re great.”
Junior Audrey Baker really helped Compton get focused with a huge catch and run on the next drive to help set up the first Tarbabes score of the afternoon. QB Miah Gibson connected with Ariel Willard on 4th down to pull Compton back within a point, 7-6.
On the next drive, Baker made a great play reading the eyes of the Claremont quarterback to step in for an interception. Back on offense, she caught a deep ball between two defenders to get Compton to the 2-yard line, where Gibson ran in a score to give C-High the 12-7 lead.
“We kind of started off rocky, but me and most of my teammates, we try to keep our spirits up,” said Baker of getting the team on track after falling behind. “No matter if we start off rocky or anything, we try to keep the spirits high to get back in that mode and be competitive.”
Compton kept adding to that lead, as Gibson threw TD passes to both Willard and Baker in the second quarter. Willard was able to elevate over a defender and turn a potential interception into six points. It was one of multiple highlight reel plays for the sophomore, who also hauled in an interception on defense and had a one-handed catch in the second half.
With a 25-7 lead at halftime, Compton’s focus was defending that advantage over the final two quarters. Freshman Destin’ee Kelley had three of her game-high four sacks after halftime to preserve the lead and give Compton the win.
Claremont scored the only points of the second half on a TD pass from Scarlette Sanders to Laila Pacheco. Sanders also opened the scoring with a scoring toss to freshman Melody White.
But Compton’s 25-0 run in the first half proved to be enough, and they’ll keep their playoff run going on Tuesday in the quarterfinals.
“We’re having a whole lot of fun, man,” said Baker. “At practices, before the games, after the games, we always try to make sure our spirits are high and keep the energy up, even after a loss … We know it’s do or die now, but we know as long as we have the opportunity, we’re going to take it, and we’re going to do our best when we have that opportunity.”
Compton will be hosting their next playoff game on Tuesday against either Royal or Antelope Valley.
“I really hope now they can see, we could actually do some things in the playoffs,” said Carreras of his team. “We’re on a roll, and I hope we can fix the little things we have to fix, and we’ll do that this week. And I just think it’s all guns blazing. Let’s go.”
