NORWALK – The Servite and Rancho Cucamonga football teams each pulled some tricks out of the bag in the closing minutes Friday, but the Cougars were the only ones with a little magic left.
Tyler Dudden’s 28-yard touchdown pass with 47 seconds left capped a late comeback as Rancho Cucamonga scored twice in the final four minutes for a 34-31 nonleague victory over the Friars (1-1).
Servite looked to have the game locked up when Quaid Carr’s touchdown run with 4:05 left gave it a 31-21 lead.
The score was set up by Aidan O‘Callaghan’s 44-yard catch down the right sideline, after not catching a ball more than 3 yards beyond the line of scrimmage all game.
“He’s a good football player,” Servite coach Chris Reinert said. “He’s not a one-trick pony.”
The Cougars (2-0) trumped Servite’s trick one play later. Dudden flipped a lateral to Jayden Coley, which drew the defense toward him. Coley stopped, set himself and threw 25 yards downfield to Jonah Dawson, who eluded one tackle and was off for an 81-yard touchdown with 3:58 remaining.
“I think we’ve run that play once in practice, and it didn’t turn out too well,” Dudden said. “But big-time players make big-time plays. And Jonah, probably one of the two biggest players on our team. All props to him, he did all the work. That’s not me, that’s him.”
The Cougars got the ball back 90 seconds later after an incomplete pass on fourth down by Servite.
Moving from the Rancho Cucamonga 41-yard line, Dudden completed four of his next seven passes for 29 yards and ran for 9 yards to get the Cougars to the Servite 23.
An illegal procedure penalty pushed them back 5 yards, and Servite’s Saxon Churchwell knocked down Dudden’s third-and-18 pass with 55 seconds left. But on fourth down, Dudden found Jeremiah Harrison deep down the middle for a touchdown.
Servite, which had won a 57-0 romp the previous week, couldn’t find the end zone until the third quarter.
Trailing 7-3, the Friars scored on their first two possessions of the second half. Quarterback Leo Hannan put them ahead 10-7 when he took off on a 24-yard touchdown run, set up by a 14-yard punt which gave Servite the ball at the Rancho 29.
After another defensive stop, Servite drove 67 yards in seven plays. Carr covered the final 17 yards for a touchdown and 17-7 lead.
“It seems to me in the first half that both sides, the defenses were flexing their muscles a little bit,” Reinert said. “Obviously it became an exciting game, but I think you saw solid performance on both sides of the ball.”
Trey Wilson’s 68-yard TD run with 1:45 left in the third quarter pulled Rancho to within 17-13, but Servite responded with a 63-yard, seven-play drive that ended with Hannan’s 12-yard touchdown run less than two minutes into the fourth quarter.
Gavin Gutierrez was the Friars’ workhorse, rushing for 93 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries. Hannan passed for 217 yards, at one point completing seven straight passes.
Wilson ran for 126 yards and two TDs for the Cougars.
