But there's one more December tradition in Los Gatos, and it's got nothing to do with the holidays—this one's associated with the football season.

Football has become a holiday tradition at Los Gatos High School, and the Wildcats hope to keep that spirit alive as they open play in the Central Coast Section Division II playoffs.

Los Gatos has been playing football in December for a number of years—the Cats have won three straight CCS Division III championships—and head coach Butch Cattolico would like nothing better than to see his club playing on the first weekend of December again this year. But first the Wildcats have to win in the last two weekends of November.

Los Gatos, the No. 1 seed in CCS Division II, will open the playoffs at Helm Field against Alisal on Nov. 21, 7 p.m. The Trojans, co-champions in the Monterey Bay League this fall, will make the trip up from Salinas to make their CCS debut on Friday night.

"They have two really good running backs," said Cattolico of the Trojans, who run a wing T offense. "They're both quick, and one is a little bigger kid."

"They look pretty big on film," he added. "It looks like they've got some speed and quickness both in the secondary and on offense."

Alisal comes into the game with a 4-4-2 record after posting a 3-1-1 mark to get a piece of the league title.

"The wing T is an offense we've seen before," said Cattolico. "They remind me a lot of Homestead, at least from what we've seen this year."

The Gatos coach is hoping for a better effort from his Cats this week than they showed last week—at least in the first half—in a 25-19 loss to Wilcox.

"To be honest, we went out and weren't very excited about the game and Wilcox was," said Cattolico of the loss. "[Wilcox was] wound up, sky high. It was tough to spot them 19 points. We made a nice comeback and we had a chance to put it away, but we couldn't."

"We got a little nervous," added the coach. "And Wilcox is a very good football team."

Still, the Cats fought back from a 19-0 deficit to pull to a 19-19 before losing the game.

Los Gatos started its comeback just before halftime. The Chargers had scored to take the 19-0 lead, but Alex Ghanavati ran back the Wilcox kick-off 30 yards and Eric Rollin completed passes of 13 and 17 yards to Matt Martini. Nick Reimnitz came on to drill a 42-yard field goal to cut the Wilcox lead to 19-3.

Brian Bolandi helped the Cats grab the momentum in the second half with a big hit on the kick-off to force a fumble that Matt Kinser recovered.

Danny Bates, who led the Cats with 33 carries for 221 yards, had a couple of big runs to set up a 24-yard touchdown pass from Rollin to Martini. Rollin tossed to tight end Mark Ericson for the 2-point conversion, and the Wildcats were trailing just 19-11.

The defense went to work to stop Wilcox, and Los Gatos took over after a punt deep in its own territory. On the second play from scrimmage, Bates took off on a 61-yard run. Two more runs by Bates and a 7-yard pass from Rollin to Martini set up an 8-yard TD run by Bates. Bates ran for the 2-point conversion, and the game was tied 19-19.

Wilcox came back to drive the length of the field for a touchdown to go up 25-19, and Gatos came right back driving. The Wildcats moved to the Wilcox 14-yard line on the strength of the running of Bates, but a sack and a holding penalty pushed Gatos back to the 34.

Rollin hit Martini for 30 yards, though, and the Cats faced a first and goal at the Wilcox 4-yard line with 1:50 left in the game. But Los Gatos couldn't score.

"We just shot ourselves in the foot at that point," said Cattolico. "It was one of those games."

"We have to move on beyond this," added the coach.

Still, Cattolico was pleased with the way his club fought back in the face of adversity.

"We played really well in the second half," he said. "We had a couple of kids who really stepped it up."

The coach was pleased with the way Bates ran the football.

"He had an amazing game," said Cattolico.

Linebacker Ivan Batinich led the defense with 16 tackles and Chris Cuthbert had two sacks among his 13 tackles.

"[Batinich] probably played one of his best football games," said Cattolico. "And this was as well as [Cuthbert] has played this year."

Brian Perin, Chad Blanchard, Devin Scott and Vince Bellotti finished with seven tackles each. Chris Danser had a sack among his six tackles and David Holtzman had six tackles before leaving the game with a knee injury.

Martini finished with five tackles, Charles Talpas had four, Kinser had three and Omar Ellahie had two.

Rollin finished the night hitting on 6 of 17 passes for 93 yards, completing all of them to Martini. Danser and Ryan Lecznar were singled out for their performances on the right side of the Los Gatos offensive line.