How Valley Center football won its first high school state playoff game since 2016
The heartbreak of all of those lost football games was far from the mind of senior Max Preheim when he came up with the interception to seal Valley Center’s first playoff victory since 2016.
Preheim was one of several seniors who was there for the dejection of a 2-win season in 2019, the anguish of having a winning season abruptly ended by forfeit due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the pain of playing in a 63-0 loss in the first round of the playoffs last year.
But Preheim, like his fellow classmates, never gave up and those bad memories have been buried and replaced by the incomparable joy of doing something no one else believed you could do.
That’s how the Hornets felt after a 34-27 home win this past Friday over Maize South, a program that had advanced in the postseason in seven of the last eight years. Thanks to Preheim’s goal-line interception to end a potential game-tying drive by Maize South, Valley Center improved to 7-2 this season and advanced to face Hays (8-1) on the road in the second round of the Class 5A playoffs this Friday.
“I feel like every senior still feels that hurt a little bit,” Preheim said. “We know what the seniors before us went through. We feel like we’ve been underdogs in every single game we’ve played in. We like being in that role, we like people hating on us. We love proving everybody wrong and I feel like we’ve done that this season.”
The victory over Maize South had been five years in the making for coach Scott L’Ecuyer, who has been trying to build a winning program in Valley Center since 2018.
The Hornets had a 12-24 record in L’Ecuyer’s first four seasons, but have won a share of the AV-CTL Division II championship, cracked the top-10 rankings in Class 5A and won their first playoff game in years all in this season.
“Valley Center has always had gritty kids and that’s always been the brand of Valley Center football,” L’Ecuyer said. “These kids wanted to flip the narrative about how people viewed Valley Center. They could have been defeated, but they never were. They came in and worked and did what they needed to do to get this thing turned around.”
After ending last season on a 6-game losing streak, Valley Center has been one of the best turnarounds in the state thanks, in part, to the arrival of transfer Dai’Mont Mucker, who has rushed for 1,788 yards and 17 touchdowns in nine games this season.
Mucker carried the ball 38 times for 288 yards and scored three rushing touchdowns, plus coming through with a highlight catch on the game-winning, 28-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter against Maize South.
“We knew we had a gritty bunch who were going to be competitive, but we needed an X-Factor,” L’Ecuyer said. “Dai’Mont brought that X-Factor and he took a team that could compete most games to a team that was going to win most games.”
Perhaps the best example of that came in the first playoff game when the score was tied at 27 late in the fourth quarter and the run-heavy Valley Center offense faced with a fourth-and-11 near the Maize South goal line.
Instead of taking his usual spot in the backfield, Mucker was split out wide with only one defender lined up across from him. That was all Valley Center quarterback Hank Welu needed to see.
“I said, ‘If I’m in single coverage, Hank, throw me the ball and I’m going to make something happen,’” Mucker said.
“I saw Dai’Mont had man coverage, so I knew I had to give him a chance to go make a play,” Welu said.
Welu’s left-handed, lofted pass to the corner of the end zone connected with Mucker’s out-stretched hands, but the ball was bobbled when Mucker tripped over the fallen defender. In a stroke of luck, the ball deflected off Mucker’s leg and the 5-foot-10 junior was able to corral the catch flat on his back.
“I told him to throw me the ball, so the only thing I was thinking was, ‘Now I’ve got to catch it,’” Mucker said.
Mucker’s heroics continued a storybook season for Valley Center, which seniors like Preheim, Cameron Bowyer, Easton Boone, Kaden Lampe, Avry Lewis, Tate Tyler, Caleb Saner, Nolan Bevan, Jack McDonald, Brayden Boyd and Ashton Molello hope to continue with another underdog victory this coming Friday.
“The seniors welcomed me real good when I came to Valley Center and made me feel like I was at home,” Mucker said. “We had a team meeting with the seniors and we talked about how the next game could be the last game they ever play. I took that to heart and I was playing for my seniors because they made me feel welcomed. I figured that was the least I could do.”
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