High school football: Roy builds early lead, beats Woods Cross

ROY — Scores of Royal alumni filled the end zone stands at Roy’s Homecoming game on Friday night, and Logan Cella ran the game-sealing touchdown right into them.

Cella finished his night with two rushing TDs to help Roy stay undefeated for the season and well ahead of the pack in Region 5 with a 33-14 win over Woods Cross in front of a packed stadium of gold-clad fans.

The Royals led 20-7 at halftime but still had to weather a rugged offensive scheme from the Wildcats.

“After halftime, we knew what we had to do,” Cella said. “We had one job, and that was to finish the game.”

Cella paced a highly productive running game for the Royals but had to miss some time in the second half, taking a “stinger” to his knee from a hard hit in the open field as a ballcarrier.

Nevertheless, the senior returned later in the game and provided an all-important 11-yard TD carry with 4:57 left to build a two-score lead and put the pressure on the run-dominant Wildcats.

Roy junior Zay Morris, who grabbed a 50-plus-yard catch on the third play of the game, provided the final exclamation point with a thunderous 102-yard pick-six on the Wildcats’ penultimate drive.

“Unbelievable,” Roy coach Chris Solomona said. “Zay is just an unbelievable talent. We’re fortunate to have him fully healthy so everyone gets to see what he’s fully capable of doing on offense and defense. I’m just excited that he’s able to make plays the way he’s been making them all year.”

Roy scored in just four plays to open the game, and it wasn’t long before the Royals looked fully in control, scoring early in the second quarter on a 9-yard run by senior Robert Young.

After the Wildcats got on the board with a 44-yard touchdown pass to Krew Fornelius, Roy struck back just before the end of the first half as senior QB Dru Gardner rolled out right and fired an off-balance 1-yard TD pass to Young for a two-score lead, 20-7.

Woods Cross, which normally runs a triple-option offense, dominated time of possession, particularly with two straight touchdown drives of 14 and 13 plays, respectively.

After scoring on their last drive of the first half, the Wildcats used the same formula with the same success, slowly chugging down the field before surprising the Roy secondary with a 38-yard passing TD to Ryker Martin.

When the Wildcats faced a 26-14 deficit late in the game, however, quarterback Jesse Simmons was forced to try to make things happen through the air with less time and against a defense that learned its lesson.

Simmons had already capped off both touchdown drives with surprise downfield shots, but when it became more of a necessity than a luxury for the Cats to throw it, Roy’s defense was ready, intercepting Simmons on the last three straight Wildcat drives, one by Morris and the other two by Rhett Slater.

Gardner threw his 16th passing TD of the season to Young, and despite throwing just his second interception of the season, he turned in a solid performance in front of a crowd honoring the first-ever graduating class of the high school, the Class of 1966.

“This one is for the community; it always is,” Solomona said. “You get a Homecoming victory, it stems from what we’re all about.”

There was plenty of yellow on the field throughout the contest, and it wasn’t just Roy’s uniforms. The Royals were at a lopsided disadvantage in terms of penalties called, and even Solomona felt the frustration of it all.

“It almost seems week in and week out we have to deal with penalties,” Solomona said. “We try to harp on our guys to make sure that we stay disciplined, and it just seems like those flags are always out there on the field.”

Yet despite barely seeing the field and dealing with a bevy of flags, Roy’s offense made it happen to get to 7-0, even when those 33 points were the lowest single-game point total of the season.

Roy’s schedule from now to the end of the season will truly test whether it deserves its frontrunner status in Region 5, beginning with a trip on the road to Viewmont next Friday.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats, now 4-3, will head back home to face Northridge next week.