The American River College football team earned an intense victory at home vs. Butte College 27-25, on Oct. 22.

“We put in a lot of incredibly hard work throughout the course of the week to get us here,” said Jon Osterhout, ARC’s head football coach. 

The hard work that the team is putting in on and off the practice field is paying off, and the plays planned by the coaches are working.

This was the team’s third consecutive win, which brought ARC’s lead to 2-0 in the National Northern California Conference. 

The game started with the defense on the field, where safety Dom Spence had a major hit that led to a fumble recovery and ARC put its offense on the field immediately. 

The Beavers scored a touchdown and led the game 7-0, after a completed pass from Kenny Lueth to Robert Freeman. 

The following play, Butte scored and tied the game, 7-7.

The team was ready to react and score during the second quarter. Ian Simpson got the second touchdown for the team, it was leading 14-7 after a successful play that led to an extra point. 

The ARC defense was back on the field and after a one-yard rushing touchdown, they allowed Butte to score. 

At the end of the first half, ARC was still leading 14-13, since Butte missed the point after the touchdown. 

At the beginning of the second half, Butte scored another touchdown after a muffed punt led to a short field for them. For all of the third quarter, ARC was down 19-14.

The team had a prompt reaction in the first seconds of the fourth quarter, and Simpson scored his second touchdown of the game after a completed pass by Lueth. The team was back in the lead 20-19. 

That was not Simpson’s last touchdown, in fact, he scored his third one during the last five minutes of the game, bringing the score to 27-19. 

At this point, the game seemed done, but it wasn’t. Butte scored a passing touchdown and went for two but didn’t complete the play successfully, this brought the score to 27-25. 

The last minute of the game seemed to last forever, Butte kicked an onside kick and recovered it, leading to an opportunity to score. The defense stopped the Butte offense due to a forced fumble by Cian Slone that was recovered by ARC.

The ARC offense had to punt after the fumble recovery that allowed Butte to have one last final drive, which set them up for a 55-yard field goal that they didn’t make. 

“It came down to another game where the last play was decisive,” Osterhout said. “And fortunately for us, we came off with the ‘W’.”

ARC won under the excited eyes of its family and friends. They ended the game with 264 yards of total offense. 

There were strong performances from all the players on the field, in particular, Lueth and Matt Carlisle with 2 touchdown passes, Simpson with 3 touchdown catches, Josh Tremain with 15 tackles and Spence with 10 tackles. 

ARC’s next game will be away against Santa Rosa Junior College on Oct. 29. 

“Santa Rosa, it’s a very well-coached football team, it will be hungry to try to upset us, but we’re going to play our game and push through our things,” Osterhout said.