Bulldogs come back to win thriller over Trojans, 23-18

A young Folsom High football team took a big step in its growth Saturday night. After allowing Oak Ridge a game-tying touchdown and go-ahead extra point with 5:13 to play in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs came back and scored the game-winning touchdown with 1:04 to play and earned a 23-18 victory over the Trojans in a thriller. After throwing an interception, turning the ball back over to the Trojans with 4:20 to play when Ryan Enney picked off his pass, Folsom junior quarterback Tyler Tremain bounced back and directed the game-winning 91-yard drive. Tremain completed 5-of-7 passes, including a 37-yard bomb to Rico Flores on the first play that moved the Bulldogs from its own 9-year-line to the 46. After an incompletion, Tremain found Justin Arnaz for a 19-yard pass to move the ball to the Oak Ridge 30. Three plays later on fourth-and-nine, Tremain calmly found a wide-open DJ Brown for a 20-yard gain. After losing two-yards on a sack by Zach Lerner, Tremain connected with Flores again for a 16-yard touchdown. "I just battled back," Tremain said. "We've worked so long to play. I knew our defense would get the ball back, and I just had to flip the page. In that situation, there's nothing I love more than throwing a game-winning touchdown. I knew the safety would be in the middle of the field, and I knew I'd have Rico on the post wide open, and I put it there." Said Flores, "It was a big-time play and I'm a big-time player. It felt good pulling through. We just executed. We've got to keep it going." The Bulldogs have seven sophomores on their team, that's only one less than the number of seniors. Despite this youth, Coach Paul Doherty likes to talk about his team's maturity. "I'm not surprised by the result, I'm encouraged by it," Doherty said. "Oak Ridge is a very good team and they will be even better in five games. We played with maturity. We didn't get rattled. We competed and stuck together and we needed to stick together tonight. "Tyler was the best demonstration of maturity tonight. What he showed in the last minutes, throwing an interception and coming back to throw the game-winning touchdown, that's the type of maturity that this entire team has shown the last 15 months." The Trojans, the defending Sac-Joaquin Section Division I champions, looked like they had this one momentarily. A 22-play drive to start the second half ate up 10 minutes and 57 seconds of the third quarter. Capped off by a touchdown run by Gui Lozada, the Trojans cut Folsom's 14-3 halftime lead to 14-11 following Drew Cowart's two-point conversion. Folsom came back and thanks to a tough Trojan defense, could only manage a 20-yard field goal by Jake Tremain. Cowart, a sophomore playing his first varsity football game, then drove the Trojan offense down the field on a 12-play, 66-yard drive. Most came on hard-earned rushing yards up the middle by Reese Catchings, but Cowart completed five passes on the drive, including the final play, a 12-yard touchdown pass to Nabors that tied the game at 17. Carson Nichols then drove through the extra point to put the Trojans up 18-17. After Enney's interception, the Trojans needed only a first down or two to secure the game, but Folsom's defense held them to a three-and-out, which included a five-yard penalty on a procedure call on Oak Ridge. In the first half, the Trojans managed only a 24-yard field goal by Nichols. Folsom scored a pair of touchdowns, an 11-yard pass from Tremain to Arnaz late in the first quarter to put Folsom on top 7-3, and then a 53-yard pass from Tremain to Austin McMilllan with 33 seconds to play in the half, which proved to be a devastating blow. "It looked a lot like a first game with sloppiness from both teams," Oak Ridge coach Eric Cavaliere said. "It was a hard-fought game. Like Coach Darren Jonutz said, Folsom made one more play than we did. "We played better in the second half. Our defense played with fire, and we found something on offense, and that 22-play drive was something else. At the end, we ran out of gas. It really hurt us to lose Gui and Ryan. Both left the game injured and did not return. That hurt us having two, three-year players out. I'm not making excuses, Folsom deserves to win. I have a lot of respect for what they do." Lozada left the game injured early in the fourth quarter, while Enney was injured on his interception with 4:20 to play and did not return. Like Doherty, Cavaliere was pleased with the play of his first-year quarterback. "Drew battled, made good decisions and took care of the ball," Cavaliere said. "He ran hard, made some good passes, and improvised at times. It was a good first varsity game for him." Cowart was pleased with the game and excited for the future. "It was super fun, and I loved it," Cowart said. "We played a good game, but made some stupid mistakes, allowed some big plays, and I wasn't able to make some throws when I needed to. The offensive line played a great game, and really picked up the blitz. I'm super confident in this team moving forward. We showed how competitive we are. We just have to stay positive and keep improving."