Crescenta Valley High football relives overtime win
GLENDALE — The Glendale YMCA Quarterback Club, in its 71st year, meets Tuesdays at the Elk’s Lodge. The following are odds and ends from the sixth meeting of the year.
FALCONS RELIVE WILD RIDE
With impeccable timing, the Crescenta Valley High football team got its biggest win of the year a week after its first loss.
At the Glendale YMCA Quarterback Club Tuesday, Falcons Coach Paul Schilling was all too happy to recount his team’s 48-47 overtime Pacific League win against a then-undefeated Burbank.
“That was an amazing game to be a part of, we’re still trying to get my heart rate back to normal,” Schilling said. “We tried to tell the kids you don’t get to experience things like that all the time.”
After leading the whole game, it appeared it may not end in CV’s favor Friday night at Moyse Field. With the game tied at 40, the Falcons (5-1, 2-1 in league) drove the ball into field-goal range, but missed a 32-yard field goal with nine seconds left in regulation to send the game into overtime.
While momentum may have been going toward Burbank (5-1, 2-1), it seemed the opposite to Schilling when the coaches and players met in the middle of the field for the overtime coin toss.
“Burbank was in shock, they’re very good and they didn’t think we could play with them,” he said. “Our guys were just excited, fired up and their guys were stunned and couldn’t believe it — their coach, too. We played off that.”
Still, the Bulldogs opened the extra frame with a touchdown for their first lead, 47-40, of the night. Crescenta Valley responded with what appeared to be a reverse that was tossed back to quarterback Brian Gadsby for a flea-flicker pass.
Gadsby, who finished 26 of 32 for 367 yards, two touchdowns and an interception, hit wide receiver Chase Walker (226 yards, two touchdowns on 11 catches) for a 38-yard touchdown.
Those two connected again on a gutsy two-point conversion pass in the back of the end zone, as Walker dragged his feet just inbounds to end the game.
BONDS ACKNOWLEDGES HISTORIC WIN
Fresh off earning his 100th win with the St. Francis High football team, the only talk of Jim Bonds’ personal milestone came from a shout in the crowd of “100th win,” which drew applause from those in attendance, before Bonds’ speech.
“Thank you,” said Bonds, who has posted a 100-56 record since taking over as the Golden Knights coach in 2000, humbly.
Bonds then quickly transitioned to the stellar play of his Golden Knights in a 63-18 win over St. Paul that hoisted him to the century mark and boosted them to a 6-0, 1-0 in Mission League record.
St. Francis found itself down to start the game, 6-0, but it wouldn’t be that way for long.
“It kind of got our attention,” Bonds said of being down. “We scored 50-unaswered points the rest of the half. … I promise you we didn’t do anything to run up the score. It was kind of a Murphy’s Law game for them. Anything that could go wrong did.”
Defensively, the Knights took advantage and forced six turnovers, with three interceptions and fumbles each.
St. Francis checks in at No. 4 in the CIF Southern Section Western Division rankings, with a big league game coming up against No. 6 Cathedral at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Friedman Field.
FORMER TORNADO LOOKS BACK
Kevin Brown, a former Hoover High and University of California quarterback, is best known for leading the Golden Bears to a 17-11 win over Stanford in 1986, the final game of Brown’s collegiate career.
It’s a memory that’s a little foggy for Brown, as he suffered a concussion early on but played through it to lead Cal to what’s considered one of the greatest upsets in its history.
“If that would have happened today it would have been over, but at the time I just begged the trainer and talked my way back onto the field,” said Brown, who led Hoover to a 6-3 season and the playoffs as a senior in 1981. “The rest of the game was kind of weird and the next couple of days were kind of weird. That’s just kind of the way things were back and then and I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
The 1-9 Cal team had fired its coach earlier in the year and not scored a touchdown in nearly a month, but still pulled off the Big Game victory.
Brown reportedly suffered the concussion just as he set the stage for the upset. The signal caller took a helmet-to-helmet hit after completing a 61-yard pass downfield. According to CaliforniaGoldenBlogs.com, he stayed in the game and finished the drive with a five-yard touchdown pass to give the Bears a 7-0 lead.
While not all there, Brown stayed in and helped deliver the upset victory. It was his only start of the season after he lost the starting job he held as a junior to an underclassman as a senior.
“[Us seniors] did have a chance to pull ourselves together for that last game against Stanford,” Brown said. “We had a chance for a day to redeem ourselves.”