Woodside cooks up winning recipe in victory over Grizzlies

Trevor Cook won’t bring it up himself, so you have to ask. Has anyone ever told you that you remind them of Julian Edelman?

“My coaches tell me that all the time,” said Cook, Woodside High’s senior receiver-turned-quarterback, who led the Wildcats to a wild 45-33 win over visiting Jefferson on Friday.

“They’ve been telling me that since my junior year. It’s an honor to hear that, but I don’t know.”

Edelman, possibly the best to ever play quarterback at Woodside (he led the Wildcats to a 13-0 record as a senior in 2004) went on to win two Super Bowls as a slot receiver for the New England Patriots.

Who knows what the future has in store for Cook? He never played a down of football until last season. And he still hasn’t started a game at QB.

Cook came in with less than a minute remaining in the second quarter, after starting QB Brody Crowley injured his throwing hand (bruised palm).

Cook was 5 of 7 for 91 yards and a touchdown. He also ran for 36 yards on five carries.

Woodside (4-1, 1-1) was ahead, 20-14, at the time. But Cook soon found that his talents would be needed in a big way for his team to pull this one out.

First, Jefferson took the second-half kickoff 61 yards on seven plays to regain the lead, 21-20, on a 31-yard pass play from Joaquin Alvarez to Henry Tom. But Cook soon went to work, and led his team to 20 unanswered points.

First he led Woodside on a 60-yard scoring drive, which featured a 16-yard completion to Isaiah Henderson (116 yards rushing on six carries), and Nathan Yoho’s 28-yard TD run off left tackle.

Woodside reeled off two more TDs to seal the win. Or so they thought at the time.

Woodside led 39-21 with only 5:12 remaining in the game, when Jefferson (0-1, 3-2) began a very unlikely comeback.

First Alvarez connected with Tariq Byrd on a 57-yard scoring bomb to make it 39-27 (the two-point conversion failed).

Then the Grizzlies (Jefferson ended a 90-year run as the Indians in 2015) recovered an onside kick, and took the possession 42 yards for another score to come within 39-33 with 3:07 left (the PAT kick failed).

So suddenly Woodside was leading by only six, pinned at its own 17 with more than three minutes left.

But that’s when Henderson conjured some magic of his own. The running back got around the left end on second down and scurried 74 yards to the Jefferson 5.

With a little help from his friends.

“Our offensive line, you can’t say enough about them,” Cook said. “They blocked their hearts out tonight. Christian Ochoa, Adrian Jiminez, Gerry Nava, Adrian Foresti, all of them.”

Cook capped the drive with a six-yard TD run for the final margin.

“When Brody went out, I think that Jefferson thought they had this in the bag,” Cook said. “But they weren’t ready for a completely different style. I brought legs and they weren’t ready for it.”

Crowley threw for two touchdowns in the first half — one a 50-yard strike to Scott Morimoto.

Cook has been a football fan most of his life, as is his father, who grew up in Ohio. But Trevor never went out for the sport until last season as a junior — preferring to concentrate on basketball, golf and soccer.

“But I didn’t want my high school career to end without even trying football,” Cook said. “I thought that if I could get a chance, I might do something big. If I could get a chance, I could have some fun and maybe make my dad proud.

“Well, now look. I’m really living it right now.”