Calvary Chapel clips Estancia on Rauch’s late field goal
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SANTA ANA — Estancia wasted chance after chance Thursday night, and it cost the Eagles at the finish in a vital Sigma League football showdown.
They took just 10 points from four first-half, red-zone penetrations, opted not to kick a should-make field goal to close the first half, missed an extra point after surging ahead in the third quarter, then couldn’t stop Santa Ana Calvary Chapel in a relentless six closing minutes, and it added up to a final-seconds defeat in a matchup of chief league-title contenders.
Jett Rauch’s 35-yard field goal with 18 seconds to play provided the difference as Calvary Chapel, also the Eagles, overcame four interceptions — three by Brandon Bettinghausen — to pull out a 17-16 victory at Segerstrom High.
“We squandered a couple of opportunities,” said head coach Mike Bargas, who had led Estancia (5-2, 1-1 in the Sigma League) to one-point wins in the past two seasons’ meetings. “If you look at it, the ball finds a mistake, and we made some mistakes. They’re a good football team. We lose by a point, but, luckily for us, we have three more games that we get to play.”
Senior running back Jeff Brown ran his 100-plus rushing streak to six games, his 13th in 25 career games, but he added nothing to his 103-yard first-half total as Calvary Chapel (7-0, 2-0), flooded the middle amid Estancia’s passing inefficiencies and conceded just 4 yards on 10 of the visitors’ 11 second-half snaps.
The outlier — an 81-yard Kai Bargas-to-Bennett Molica completion, 61 of them on a sprint up the right sideline after dodging a tackler — gave Estancia a 16-14 edge from its initial second-half possession. Juan Silva’s pivotal point-after kick went wide right.
Two long Calvary Chapel drives — eight and six minutes, 28 plays in all, the first leading to Sean Sweeney’s seventh interception in seven games — spent most of the remaining time, mostly through Waldo Castrejon, who ran 16 times for 62 of his 112 yards, including six of the seven plays preceding Rauch’s field goal.
Estancia got two plays, from its 23-yard line, in the last 12 seconds: an incompletion and a Castrejon interception.
“It’s a hard loss,” said Bettinghausen, who also has seven interceptions. “I felt like we played [to] our full ability, and we just came up short. ... I think this is a refresher, to let us know, get us back into the groove of things.”
Estancia twice surrendered first-half leads. It settled for a 24-yard Silva field goal on the game’s opening drive (with Chaz White returning the ensuing kickoff 88 yards for a 7-3 Calvary Chapel lead), then utilized a 15-yard Bettinghausen run and a face-mask penalty to set up Brown’s 9-yard touchdown on its second possession (with White’s touchdown run making it 14-10 not quite halfway through the second quarter).
Estancia missed two vital scoring opportunities. Bettinghausen returned his first interception, right after Brown’s score, 43 yards to the Calvary Chapel 2. Brown gained nothing, Kai Bargas was sacked, and Gilberto Torres’ snap over the quarterback’s head gave Calvary Chapel the ball at the 28.
The first half ended with a seven-minute Estancia drive from its 35-yard line to the Calvary Chapel 13. That’s a 30-yard field goal, within Silva’s range, and the tee was placed. Molica, the holder, stood to take the snap, then tossed the ball into a crowd just inside the 10, and Jorge Brito intercepted.
Why not kick the field goal?
“Because we come here to win,” Bargas said. “I didn’t know it was going to be that tight, but I don’t know, we made decisions last second and [no regrets]. I’ve doubted myself enough these years, and everybody thinks they know it all. If we see opportunities that are available, we take them.
“I trust what we do. Sometimes the calculation doesn’t work right. It’s based off of knowledge and what we saw in film [and what] we practiced. Unfortunately, we lost by a point.”
Sigma League
Calvary Chapel 17, Estancia 16
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Estancia 10 - 0 - 6 - 0 — 16
Calvary Chapel 7 - 7 - 0 - 3 — 17
FIRST QUARTER
E — Silva 24 FG, 7:14.
CC — White 88 kick return (Rauch kick), 7:00.
E — Brown 9 run (Silva kick), 5:19.
SECOND QUARTER
CC — White 6 run (Rauch kick), 7:13.
THIRD QUARTER
E — Molica 81 pass from Bargas (kick failed), 7:44.
FOURTH QUARTER
CC — Rauch 35 FG, 0:18.
INDIVIDUAL RUSHING
E — J. Brown, 23-103, 1 TD; Bettinghausen, 2-20; Sweeney, 1-7; Vasquez, 1-5; Bargas, 2-(-6); Team, 1-(-17).
CC — Castrejon, 25-112; Lindsay, 3-14; White, 1-6, 1 TD; Wiles 1-0.
INDIVIDUAL PASSING
E — Bargas, 3-13-1, 109, 1 TD; Molica, 0-1-1, 0.
CC — Wiles, 10-22-4, 82.
INDIVIDUAL RECEIVING
E — Johner, 2-28; Molica, 1-81, 1 TD.
CC — Brito, 2-49; Nieves, 3-18; White, 2-11; Lindsay, 3-9.
