Later this fall at Tahoma High, they might refer to it as The Drive.
Staring at a third-and-20 with nothing but 90 yards of green and two minutes in front of him, Tahoma quarterback Heyden Johnson took a deep breath, relaxed and went to work at Maxwell Stadium last Friday night.
The 6-foot-3 senior then calmly delivered, completing four consecutive passes, culminating in a 20-yard game-winning touchdown strike to Chris Marangon with 33 seconds remaining on the clock, to give the Bears an improbable 21-17 South Puget Sound League North Division victory against Auburn Riverside.
“That was one of the sweetest things we’ve done as a team,” said Johnson, who finished the night 9 of 16 for 178 yards and the one touchdown.
Sweet might not suffice in summing up win for the Bears (2-0) against the Ravens (1-1). Auburn Riverside had a huge advantage in time of possession (31:26 to 16:34) and appeared well on its way to the win after running back Jake Pele punched in a 5-yard touchdown run with 3:37 to play.
“(Tahoma) was able to dig a little deeper tonight,” lamented Auburn Riverside coach Bob Morgan, whose team simply ran out of gas in the fourth quarter. “We played a hard game, but they deserved this one right now.”
For three quarters at least, it was the Ravens who likely deserved the win. Tahoma didn’t have much of an answer for Pele, a bulldozing, 6-foot-3, 245-pound running back, and spent most of the first 36 minutes on defense.
“We had it,” said Pele, who finished with a game-high 133 yards and two touchdowns on 23 carries. “They just had a little more gas in the tank, I guess.”
Though Tahoma took the initial lead on a 58-yard touchdown run by Marangon with 1:58 remaining in the first quarter, it was the Ravens who took a certain level of confidence and momentum into the half, tied at 7-7.
Part of the reason for that was Pele’s 1-yard touchdown run that ended the second quarter. The other part of the equation was that Auburn Riverside was controlling the line of scrimmage and ran 24 plays in the second quarter to Tahoma’s six.
As good as the Ravens felt at the time, however, they likely could have done more damage. But they came up empty-handed after a 19-play, 67-yard drive took 9:47 off the clock.
The Ravens used that same methodical approach to open the third quarter, eating up nearly eight minutes on a 15-play drive that culminated in a 37-yard field goal by Tyson Sykes, giving AR its first lead, 10-7.
Tahoma’s Marangon responded midway through the fourth, splitting a seam on the left side and bolting 32 yards for a touchdown and a 14-10 Bears lead.
Three minutes later, Auburn Riverside was able to regain the lead, thanks to a Tahoma miscue. Bears running back Kurt LaFranchi mishandled a high pitch from Johnson at the Tahoma 7. Sykes swooped in for the fumble recovery that led to Pele’s second score of the night, a 5-yard burst up the middle, giving Auburn Riverside a 17-14 lead with 3:37 left.
Then, after getting sacked on consecutive plays and being flagged on the third – all of which dropped Tahoma back to its own 10-yard line _ Johnson went to work. He escaped that 3rd-and-20 jam by hitting Marc Ragan on a sideline pattern, that got Tahoma just enough for a first down. Then, after a 4-yard burst by Josiah Anderson, Johnson found Cameron Balliet for 36 more yards. He finished off The Drive with consecutive completions to Marangon, the last of which the Tahoma wide receiver used every inch of his 5-foot-11 frame to reach over the end zone stripe for the game-winning score.
“I think it was a defining moment for (Johnson),” Tahoma coach Tony Davis said.
Marangon, who finished with 96 yards rushing and 47 receiving, agreed.
“Heyden, he’s always had the maturity to control a football team like he did tonight,” he said. “That really showed his true colors.”
