Tradition, intensity run deep as Colfax outlasts Bear River in double OT to win D-V title
There was a large, hand-painted sign affixed to the chain link fence between the field and the Bear River Bruins fans that read “Small Town, Big Dreams.”
It just as easily applied to the Colfax Falcons.
Two of Northern California’s most successful small-school football programs met for the Sac-Joaquin Section Division V title at Nevada Union High’s Hooper Stadium on Friday night. It was a repeat of the Week 9 matchup between the Bruins and Falcons, a rivalry game where the Falcons handled the Bruins 41-14 to win the Pioneer Valley League title.
Again this season, top-seeded Colfax got the better of No. 3 Bear River, doing so in double overtime, 31-28.
Bear River faced a fourth-and-25 after Colfax kicker Dylan Garcia nailed a 25-yard field goal in the second overtime period. Calder Kunde’s Hail Mary pass was batted away at the goal line, and the Falcons began to celebrate.
The Falcons advance to the CIF Northern California Regional game next week.
Alex Weir threw two touchdowns for the Falcons, a 24-yarder to Daniel Bliss and a 2-yard floater to Jake Green.
Colfax likes to throw – a lot. And Weir prefers his footballs to not have ice on them, so the Falcons came up with an ingenious solution Friday night in temperatures hovering above freezing. They cut the bottom out of a trash can, inserted a propane burner element inside and place the footballs on a metal grate that sits about eight inches above the gentle flames.
Twenty minutes at 350 degrees, no basting needed.
Weir’s father, Shannon, scored the first touchdown in Bear River varsity history in 1986 at Hooper Stadium when Bear River played its home games at Nevada Union before the Lake of the Pines campus got a permanent stadium and field in 1988. Shannon Weir played for Bear River coach Terry Logue during Logue’s first season with the program in 1987.
Friday was the first playoff game in section history – regardless of division – featuring opposing coaches with 200 or more wins.
Colfax coach Tony Martello, a Colfax graduate, had a team in a final for the 11th time. Logue, along with co-head coach Scott Savoie, had the Bruins in a final for the sixth time. It’s the third time in five seasons the two teams have met for a section title. Bear River won the two previous two games, including last season.
“We’re two of the best small-school programs in the entire state,” Logue said earlier in the week. “We may only have 22 players, but they expect to be here in the finals. This rivalry is something special.”
Colfax has a whopping 28 players.
“It shows a lot about what our programs are about because our numbers keep getting smaller,” Martello said. “We used to be in the 800s in enrollment now we’re in the low 600s. I used to be able to platoon and play guys one way. I can’t do that anymore so we expect more from our kids and they always deliver. We’re not always going to win the battle of attrition, but we’re always going to play hard.”
Adversaries like these make the high school game so interesting, as two close knit communities with a healthy respect and rivarly came together for another intense game. The teams expected nothing less.
“We both have such great, rich traditions,” Savoie said. “We talk to our team all the time about our history here and the great championship teams of 1991, 1994, 1997, and in recent years. We’ll even watch old highlight films and we let these kids know that they are part of our tradition.”