In last November’s NorCal Championship game, ARC lost at City College of San Francisco on a late fourth quarter field goal by a score of 17-14 as CCSF’s football team and the attending crowd went crazy in celebration, having moved on to the state championship.
This year in week four of the regular season, ARC went back to the Bay Area and returned the favor in a game with many similarities to the original, with the main difference being that it ended as a 20-17 win instead of a loss.
In 2014, ARC’s starting quarterback was an athletic bounceback sophomore under six feet tall wearing number two, whose name was Tanner Trosin. In 2015, ARC’s starting quarterback Jihad Vercher is an athletic bounceback sophomore under six feet tall wearing number two.
Trosin and Vercher each threw one touchdown and no interceptions against CCSF. Vercher had a better day overall, completing nearly two-thirds of his passes for 269 yards, compared to Trosin completing less than half of his passes for 167 yards.
ARC freshman wide receiver Will McClure had one catch for 11 yards in the 2014 game, and as a sophomore had one catch for 25 yards in the 2015 game.
The former was in the second quarter and gave ARC its first first down of that drive, while the latter was a near-touchdown that put ARC at the CCSF one-yard line, and set up the game-winning field goal.
CCSF kicker Cristian Antezana missed two field goals and made one in both games.
In 2014, the pair of missed kicks were from 45 and 31 yards, but the game winner was a 41-yarder. In 2015, Antezana missed kicks were from 27 and 20, but the one he made one was from 36 yards.
ARC’s running game struggled for a majority of both games.
2014’s starter Deon Ransom, who was coming off of two weeks in which he had set opposing teams on fire for a total of 460 yards and five touchdowns, was kept to 27 yards on 16 attempts, an average of 1.7 yards per rush. 2015’s starter Armand Shyne had 13 rushes for 72 yards and a touchdown, with a well-above-average average run of 5.5 yards. But 63 of those yards came on his touchdown run, meaning without that breakaway he would have had 12 runs for 9 yards.
CCSF had more first downs in both games, but in 2014, they more than doubled ARC’s amount, 22-9. In 2015, the margin was 21-19 in favor of ARC, but ARC narrowly outgained CCSF in total offensive yards.
CCSF won the time of possession battle in both games; In 2014 by 12 minutes, and in 2015 by six minutes.
Both game-winning field goals were kicked on the north side of the field.
Last year, CCSF head coach George Rush was in the stadium coaching in his 38th season for the Rams. Rush has since retired and the stadium was renamed Rush Stadium after him.
The biggest differences are obviously the importance of the game and the outcome.
ARC would trade a NorCal championship win for a week four win in a heartbeat,but that does nothing to take away from the visible joy that head coach Jon Osterhout and his team felt when Sam Keil’s kick went through the uprights.
