In this season’s Cottonwood League championship game, the Trinity Knights had the opportunity to rewrite their season after a 1-3 start. But in the end, the Santa Rosa Rangers snatched the league crown from Trinity Thursday night.
The Knights were defeated 35-14, and finished the season second in the league standings
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t our night. Santa Rosa deserved that win. They played a great game,” Trinity head coach Dave Eastham said. “We had some things that didn’t go away. We started off really strong. You know, we went down, scored, and took the lead. We got that on-side kick. And then, you know, things didn’t go our way. We got a couple penalties that killed some drives.”
Heading into week 10, the Knights (5-3, 4-1) matched up with their most difficult opponent yet. The Rangers (8-2, 4-1) had outscored their opponents 241-173 going into Thursday’s night game.
After securing a playoff berth following the four-game road trip, all the Knights needed was a win at home over second-place Santa Rosa Academy for the league crown.
But going into the game, Eastham wanted his team to focus more on the play of their game instead of what was at stake.
“We talked about it. It’s another game, you know, the hardest thing is to not get tense and not get tight,” he said. “So, we just talked about playing loose and playing like we have every week. You know, that’s always going to be our message.”
And that was evident in the first half.
On the Knights’ first drive of the game, the offense didn’t waste any time getting on the board.
Quarterback Andrew Carlson threw a 20-plus-yard pass to Christopher Brown to set the Knights’ offense in the redzone.
And a few players later, Carlson threw a pass to Aiden Visconti down the sideline, who broke multiple tackles and ran into the end zone for a touchdown.
While it looked like the early lead would hold, the Knights’ defense surrendered to the Rangers’ offense toward the end of the opening quarter.
After a goal-line stand from the Knights backed the Rangers to the 20-yard line, quarterback Jacob Goode scrambled out of the pocket into the end zone for a touchdown and tied the game at 7 apiece.
On the next drive, the Knights were back on offense and took their time driving down the field.
Trinity’s offense ran down half of the second quarter with timely passes downfield and on third and goal, running back Hudson Sweitzer scored a touchdown from 8 yards out and the Knights took back the lead.
But with two minutes left to go in halftime, the Rangers punched right back to tie the game following Ian Taylor’s 30-yard run down the sideline for the touchdown.
On the Rangers’ next offensive drive, Goode found Max DuPree in open field in what was a missed assignment from the Knights defense that allowed the receiver to score a touchdown with 30 seconds left in the first half and take a 21-14 lead.
To make things even rougher for the Knights was that the Rangers were set to start possession in the second half.
In the fourth quarter, the Knights were unsuccessful in a comeback as the closest the team came to scoring was a Carlson pass towards the end zone that was incomplete, and Trinity forced a turnover on downs.
On the next drive, the Rangers scored again, ran down the clock and sealed the loss for Trinity.
The loss ends the regular season for Trinity, but the Knights will prepare for the playoffs.
Although the team was not successful in defending the league title, Eastham has his eyes set for achievements the team can aim for in the postseason.
He’ll be taking his team without an impact player in Cade Herta, who injured his thumb earlier in the season and will require surgery.
“We are a very small school, we have 90 boys, we have 29 of them on our football team,” Eastham said. “That’s a huge loss for us. But like anything, Football is a great teacher of life. And it doesn’t matter how many people we have, we’re going to line up and we’re going to play our hearts out.”
