LOWER LAKE — In a word, the clash between Lower Lake and Fort Bragg was in-dee-fensible.
The two North Central League I North varsity football rivals put up 91 points on 13 touchdowns before Fort Bragg closed out the Trojans 49-42 to remain unbeaten at 6-0 with both coaches Stan Weiper of Lower Lake and Jack Moyer of Fort Bragg lamenting their teams” mutual mistakes.
“They”re a good team,” said Weiper, “and I thought we battled them pretty well. We just made some critical mistakes giving up the short field down there.”
Said Moyer, “We knew they were a good team and they made some big plays. They didn”t surprise us whatsoever. We must have made some stupid mistakes. We had been playing pretty good defense and we didn”t do that tonight.”
As Weiper said, the game turned on two crucial fumbles that gave the Timberwolves the ball on the Lower Lake 9-yard-line in the second quarter from where Fort Bragg scored on two plays, and on the 23 in the fourth period from where the ”Wolves scored easily on a single play, a pass from Brandon Freitas to Cody Ryden for Fort Bragg”s final TD and what proved to be the stand-up touchdown.
Still, the Trojans came within a breath of ending Fort Bragg”s unblemished record. If time hadn”t run out on them at the half, they might have done just that.
Opening a drive on their own 25 just after the ”Wolves went up 28-20 with 2:57 left in the first half, Lower Lake used seven plays to advance to the Fort Bragg 4. With four seconds left, quarterback Devante Scott, who sparked the Lower Lake offense all night, kept the ball and dived for the goal line. His dive ended up six inches short of the goal stripe chalk.
“I didn”t come up with the right play on that one,” said Weiper. “I had the wrong bodies in the game. But we were still five yards out and we might not have made it anyway.”
In losing for the second time in six games, the Trojans put up a spirited battle in which they answered Fort Bragg scores with touchdowns of their own five times.
They were not to be denied, driving 70 yards on nine plays, 80 yards on 10 plays, 74 yards on five plays and 61 yards on 12 plays. Additionally, Roy Percoats sprang for 51-yard score and ran a kickoff back for 70 yards that led eventually to a Jack O”Hara TD from the 3.
What they couldn”t do was close the deal when they put the ”Wolves in third-down-and-long-yardage situations. A Freitas pass to wideout Alfredo Huerta converted a third-and-11 at the 16 into a TD. Freitas also bailed Fort Bragg out of a third-and-8 from the Trojan 44 with a 30-yard completion to Michael Melton. Moments later, one play after being sacked for a six-yard loss, Freitas connected with Ryden for a 19-yard TD.
Lower Lake”s last desperate drive ended with Ryden”s picking off a Scott pass from the Lower Lake 48 with 29 seconds left.
