POINT ARENA >> The Point Arena Pirates were on the move and three yards away from the end zone trailing 46-44 with 1:31 remaining in the game.
Moments earlier, the Upper Lake Cougars called a timeout. One of the things discussed was getting bigger linemen into the game, and Francisco “Pancho” Flores trotted in from the sidelines. When play resumed, Upper Lake coach Frank Gudmundson had a front-row seat for what was about to transpire and he literally watched a season’s worth of hard work flash before his eyes.
“Point Arena ran up the gut and the middle of the line opened up like the Red Sea,” Gudmundson said.
Just as a Pirates running back was about to break through that hole and burst into the end zone for the go-ahead score, an arm appeared and punched the ball from his grasp. The arm belonged to Flores, who promptly pounced on the loose ball to preserve the victory and save the day as the Cougars held on for the 46-44 win, which moves them into a flat-footed tie for first place atop the North Central League III standings with Calistoga and Anderson Valley. All three teams are 6-1 with one game remaining.
“It couldn’t happen to a better kid,” Gudmundson said of Flores, who began the year on the soccer team, quit to join the football team, then tried to quit football and rejoin soccer only to be told by the soccer coach he was no longer welcome.
“The lesson being you just can’t keep quitting with no penalty,” Gudmundson said. “He’s learned that and he’s really come around. He’s improved so much since then.”
Only a junior, Flores is welcome back on the Upper Lake soccer team next season although Gudmundson said the welcome mat remains out for him in football as well.
“He sealed the deal for us, he saved the game,” Gudmundson said of Flores’ forced fumble and recovery.
There was nothing uneventful about Upper Lake’s victory over a Point Arena squad, now 4-2 in league, that needed a win itself to remain atop the league standings. Before the Cougars even took the field, they helped repair a Point Arena playing surface that had so many active gopher holes that you could have lost a small running back in some of them and not noticed.
“You’d sink three feet if you stepped on some of them,” Gudmundson said.
And before the first half was over, the entire chain gain was ejected for arguing with officials about penalties called against the Pirates. That delayed the game by 15 minutes before another chain gang was in place and the old one was cleared from the high school grounds and not just the playing field.
“It was crazy,” Gudmundson said.
The game was no less so. Point Arena jumped out to a 12-0 lead in the first quarter, Upper Lake rallied to take a 20-12 halftime advantage, then the Pirates outscored the Cougars 20-12 in the third quarter to draw even at 32 entering the final period.
A back-and-fourth fourth quarter saw the Cougars push ahead 38-32 and the Piratess score twice to move in front 44-38.
Upper Lake drove down the field and scored on a 28-yard pass from quarterback Derek Pritchard, his third TD pass of the game, to running back Dre Santos, who scored five touchdowns overall — three rushing and two receiving — with 5:59 remaining. On the critical two-point conversion play that followed, the Cougars spread the field, leaving an open lane for Pritchard to scramble into the end zone and break the 44-all tie.
“Both teams couldn’t get the two-point conversion all day,” Gudmundson said. “It came down to whoever got one was going to win the game and it turned out to be us.”
With more than enough time to mount their own winning drive, Point Arena moved the ball down the field and was poised at the Upper Lake 3 when Flores came through in a big way. The Cougars took over on the turnover and ran out the clock.
While Flores earned the Cougars’ hammer award following the game for his game-saving play, a close second was Santos with his five TDs, 182 yards rushing and 107 yards receiving. He was everywhere on the field and the Pirates couldn’t touch him, according to Gudmundson.
“They couldn’t stop our short passing game,” Gudmundson said. “And they couldn’t stop Dre. He got it done for us in a big way.”
Point Arena’s offense gained 489 yards to Upper Lake’s 495. Switching to a 4-3 defense late in the game helped slow the Pirates a bit, according to Gudmundson. The most telling stat was two-point conversion success – Upper Lake went 2-for-7 to Point Arena’s 1-for-7.
Other Upper Lake individual standouts were Pritchard with 271 yards on a 23-for-32 passing performance. His favorite target was freshman Chris Fecht with seven catches for 64 yards and a TD, followed by Santos with six receptions.
The Cougars lost one of their top weapons earlier when Isaac Nevarez took a hard hit and had to leave the game.
“I told the kids that no matter how this game ends, you just played a football game,” Gudmundson said. “Point Arena is a dang good little football team and I think they can beat Calistoga.”
Only two teams are eligible to advance to the season-ending Redwood Bowl next month. In the event of a three-way tie, the Cougars are currently the odd-man, according to Gudmundson. Numbers were drawn before the season began in the event of such an occurrence and both Calisotga and Anderson Valley drew lower numbers than Upper Lake. However, should either Calistoga lose to Point Arena or Anderson Valley lose to Tomales on Friday night, the Cougars would earn a spot in the Redwood Bowl by beating Laytonville at home on Halloween. In any event, an Upper Lake win this coming Saturday gives the Cougars a league pennant of some sort, which is much more significant than a Redwood Bowl berth, according to Gudmundson.
“It’s about winning cloth, something we haven’t done since 1992,” Gudmundson said. “We’ll have a pennant to hang on our gym wall.”
If that happens, the Cougars will have gone from worst to first in a single season.
“They have done everything I have asked them do,” Gudmundson said of the 2015 Cougars. “They are applying what we (the coaches) have been telling them and showing them. They drank the juice.”
