Magical season for Twelve Bridges of Lincoln ends in CIF State defeat. ‘An incredible ride’
The story wasn’t that a rising-fast football program in Placer County lost the last game of the season in the southern part of Orange County.
No, the story was that Twelve Bridges High School with the cool mascot of Raging Rhinos was even here. CIF State championship games are generally reserved for established programs that have engaged in blocking and tackling and strength and conditioning for decades.
Opened in 2021 in Lincoln and fielding just its third varsity team with its second senior class, Twelve Bridges bucked all the odds to get to Mission Viejo, piecing together a 14-0 campaign heading into Saturday afternoon’s CIF State Division 2-AA contest against Palos Verdes of Los Angeles County.
The older school won. Palos Verdes stormed to four-touchdown lead at the half and won 55-19 at Saddleback College behind a record-setting passing day on a sunny day, ending a magical playoff run for the Bridges program that made the 10-hour drive on Friday to play the biggest game of their lives.
There is no shame in losing to a better team, one with quite a head start to all of this as Palos Verdes opened in 1961. The Sea Kings are a battle-tested program from the rigorous Southern Section with a gauntlet of a schedule. The school is a sports powerhouse across campus with an academic standing to match.
Twelve Bridges coach Chris Bean said earlier this week that the main prize his program coveted was a CIF Sac-Joaquin Section blue banner and that “everything else is gravy.”
The gravy was savory last week with a dramatic Northern California championship victory over Wilcox of Santa Clara, but the grand finale here showed that the gravy turned out to be cold, lumpy and unsettling.
That’s a credit to the Sea Kings, who were a step faster and a bit more tenacious in capping an 11-5 season. Palos Verdes went 10-1 last season, losing a playoff opener, and then started this season 2-4 before hitting its stride.
“That’s the hard part of not losing a game all season and then the last game, and not showing up the way we wanted to,” Bean said. “Palos Verdes is the real deal. Maybe the moment was a little too big for us. Next-level football is the real deal here — next-level players, coaches...”
The coach who wears his emotions on his sleeves and hurts in victory and rejoices in triumph was classy in defeat, understanding that the season will not be defined by one game. But Bean’s biggest concern came true, that a young program would get run under by a veteran one, and the game would get out of control in a hurry. This was also true: Twelve Bridges did not quit or surrender, competing to the end.
“I didn’t want to get blown out,” Bean said. “I wanted people to see that Twelve Bridges was no joke. I wanted people to think, ‘Oh my God! That’s Raging Rhinos football!’ But if you’d told me before the season that we’d be here, I’d think you were crazy.”
QB ties CIF record with Folsom great
On the topic of crazy, sophomore Ryan Rakowski passed for 328 yards on 19 of 24 passing and six touchdown passes for Palos Verdes, remarkable numbers dropped onto a defense that owned most every other team this season.
Rakowski tied the CIF State championship game record for scoring throws for any division with Folsom’s Jake Browning when the most prolific quarterback in state history capped a 16-0 season for Folsom in 2014 against Oceanside of San Diego County. Browning is in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals, and when told of that after the game, Rakowski beamed.
“To be in that conversation is super awesome,” he said. “It’s a credit to our receivers and our line. This is a day I’ll tell my family about forever.”
Palos Verdes had 398 yards after three quarters and a 41-6 lead, nearly doubling the total yards for Twelve Bridges, which had ravaged teams this season with a punishing running game. Twelve Bridges worked for every yard here, and when the Raging Rhinos finally reached the end zone on a fourth-down play with Connor Flaherty hitting Ryan Wager for a 17-yard score with 5:31 left in the third quarter, the extra point kick hit the upright, making it 34-6. It just wasn’t the day for the Raging Rhinos.
Braeden Ward rushed for 169 yards in his senior finale for Twelve Bridges, and he had a 12-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter and a 1-yarder as time ran out. A year after he was a reserve on a 12-1 team, Ward was the focal point this fall, rushing for 2,740 yards and scoring 44 total touchdowns to produce one of the finest single-season rushing campaigns in regional history.
Twelve Bridges team leaders such as Ward and quarterback Connor Flaherty spoke like leaders after the loss, and they all said that the program isn’t about to stall out. For one thing, the Raging Rhinos junior varsity program has suffered just two losses in three years. The varsity squad has gone 26-2 the last two seasons. The cupboard is not bare, and the leadership is in place with Bean.
The team was so united that a good many of the varsity players dyed their hair blond late this week, and Bean was ready to do the same thing had the Raging Rhinos won. Instead, the coach who was a three-sport star in the early 1990s at Colfax High School will get a hair cut, last doing so in August. Bean’s wife, Jennifer, urged him to let it grow until the team loses a game.
Bean will return to school to teach history on Monday with a fresh look and plenty of perspective.
“I wouldn’t trade this season and experience for anything,” Bean said. “The sadness isn’t that we lost. It’s that everyone has to turn in their equipment. It’s been one incredible ride.”