Ryder’s Clutch Catch Helps Edison Post 21-14 Victory : Charger Receiver Hauls In 22-Yard Pass on Final Drive to Beat Capistrano Valley

Edison High School running back Gus Miranda scores three touchdowns but everyone’s talking about Bryan Ryder. Edison quarterback Greg Angelovic overcomes a rocky start to complete five of his last seven passes, lead three second-half scoring drives, but all you hear about is Bryan Ryder. The Edison defense holds Capistrano Valley to 88 yards of offense in three quarters but . . . well, you get the idea.

Edison’s Bryan Ryder is a 6-foot 4-inch tight end, who happened to make one catch all night. That one catch for 22 yards came on third-and-8 for Edison with 2:35 left in the game. It set up Miranda’s winning touchdown as Edison beat Capistrano Valley, 21-14, Friday in LeBard Stadium in front of 5,100.

This is known as picking your spots.

“Ryder made one of the best catches I’ve ever seen,” said Eric Patton, Capistrano Valley coach. “That one catch showed me he’s a Division 1 player.”

Capistrano Valley (1-1) had tied the game at 14-14 with 4:13 left, on Chi Chi Biehn’s 5-yard run for a touchdown and quarterback Tony Solliday’s two-point conversion pass to Steve DeLaura.

On the following kickoff, Edison’s Chad Ponegalek returned the ball 37 yards to the Edison 42. Running back Jim Warren gained 30 yards on two runs and a pass reception. That gave Edison the ball at the Capistrano Valley 28. After an incompletion, Edison had a third-and-eight at the 28. Angelovic took the snap, rolled right and threw off balance to seemingly nowhere.

Out of nowhere leaps Ryder, who snags the ball in an all-out stretch at the 6.

“The ball was little high,” Ryder said. “But that’s OK, cause I’m good at high catches.”

Two plays later, Miranda scored from a yard out.

“That was a clutch catch by Bryan,” said Dave White, Edison coach. “But I kind of thought he would do something like that down the stretch.”

Neither team did much in the first half. Capistrano Valley got 64 yards in offense, but did manage to get two field goals--31 and 42 yards, respectively--from kicker Scott Hannah.

Edison (2-0) nearly doubled Capistrano Valley’s output, gaining 121 yards on offense but also had six penalties for 64 yards which killed a couple of promising drives. Capistrano Valley led 6-0.

“We kind of raised our voices at halftime,” White said. “We were a lot more intense in the second half.”

With 4:30 left in the third quarter, Edison had translated that into a Miranda 1-yard run for a touchdown. The run capped a 74-yard, six-play drive. Jon Cernok’s conversion kick gave Edison a 7-6 lead.

On its next possession, Edison drove 57 yards on seven plays, this one capped by a 5-yard touchdown run by Miranda. The kick made it 14-7, and seemed to signal Edison’s control over the game.

But Capistrano Valley’s Solliday, a sophomore making his first varsity start at quarterback, helped lead a 13-play drive that included two fourth-down conversions--one on a fake punt--and a touchdown called back because of a penalty. The fake punt came with 6:06 left in the game. The ball was snapped to Biehn, who played quarterback last week, and he threw an 18-yard pass to Matt Mosebrook for a first down on the Edison 25. Two plays later, Biehn scored on an 18-yard run, but that was called back for a holding penalty.

That put the ball at the 22. Running back Vernon MacKenzie gained 10 on a run, and yet another penalty on Edison on a pass incompletion that followed put the ball on the 5. Biehn scored from there on a run.

Solliday, 5 of 11 for 35 yards, hit DeLaura on a slant pattern for the two-point conversion to make the score 14-14.

If you notice that Ryder’s name is not mentioned in all of this, it’s that he spent most of his time blocking or watching the ball go to someone else.

White said Ryder just happened to be an overlooked option most of the night, but admitted, “when you’ve got someone like him, you’ve got to get him the ball more than once a game.”

Patton said his team didn’t do anything special to stop Ryder, reasoning, “If a guy like Ryder is going to beat you, he’s going to beat you.”

And that he did.