Valley Christian beats San Juan, but has tough game in finale

Valley Christian has had a fine football season with a 6-2 record, this their first season playing 8-man football. From this point forward, however, things get tougher for the Lions. Valley Christian ends its regular season Friday night with a home game at Highlands High School again Mira Loma, the only undefeated team in Division 8 and the current prohibitive favorite to win the section championship. How would a win over the Matadors look for the Lions and what would it do to the rankings? It would be a great win for the Lions, but either way the teams could play each other again in the playoffs. "The top-five teams in Division 8 are pretty close," Valley Christian coach Doug Williams said. "Mira Loma is a big team with 30-plus kids and they can pass and run it. They've got several people they can target and can hurt you with. Hopefully, we can present the same problem to them. "If we play our game, I do think we can beat them. We're going to have to prepare really hard and execute at a high level." The 8-man football conference is so small that Valley Christian will have played three of the other top-four teams in the division prior to the playoffs, seeing all but Vacaville Christian. They've lost to Foresthill, 28-6 and split two games with Delta, losing the first one, 58-30 and winning the second one, 40-32. "We're this small click of 8-man teams who all know and play each other," Williams said. "For the most part, we're all teams that we would schedule for 11-man regular-season games because we're all so similar and we're competitive with each other" The Lions, 2-1 in league and 6-2 overall, are coming off a 37-6 win over San Juan on Saturday. As usual, quarterback Connor Tinker was heavily involved in the scoring, as he scored on a pair of touchdown runs, as well as three touchdown passes; two to Riley Garcia and another one to Caleb Tinker. Garcia caught a third touchdown on a pass from Noah Lutes. "It was a good bounce-back after our loss to Foresthill," Williams said. "We got healthy over the bye week and played well against San Juan."