Classic, emotional ending

Down by five points, Rancho Cotate had the ball on Petaluma’s one-yard line Friday night.

There was 4.8 seconds left in the game. The Cougars had just completed a 30-yard pass.

Momentum?

In the last 71 seconds Rancho had just gone 79 yards. It was a trading-punches game in which it otherwise would take the Cougars a full quarter to gain that much yardage.

“I was scared,” said Petaluma’s Ricky Sims.

“I’m never optimistic when the other team is on our one-yard line,” said Petaluma coach Steve Ellison.

“I thought we were going to get in,” said Rancho quarterback Poueu Peleti-Gore.

Petaluma’s undefeated season, its No. 1 playoff seed, and all the momentum it had built up over the last three months was an eye-blink away from extinction. And then the simplest, most amazing thing happened for Petaluma.

“He just ran into me,” Sims said.

That would be Rancho fullback Sergio Orduna. Orduna had taken the handoff from Peleti-Gore and dove right into the gut of the line, where all the beef was. A pounder himself, Orduna was no stranger to the dogpile and there, on the other side, was the dog who wouldn’t be moved.

“I wasn’t going to let him ruin our season,” Sims said. Sims stood Orduna up, a crowd of Viking teammates followed and as the gun sounded and the officials didn’t signal a touchdown, the most exciting climax to a 12-7 game you’ll ever see ended in a gasp from the winner and tears from the loser who took it to the very last tick of the clock.

“I’ve never had a game like this,” Ellison said of the 33 years he’s been coaching. “On the last play from the one-yard line with the other team having the ball? No, nothing like this before.”

Rancho players stood stunned on the field, waiting for the officials to signal the touchdown that would never come.

Disbelief, that’s what they looked like. How could the Cougars go that far, that quickly, and then fail to advance an arm’s length.

Mystifying it was for them.

And just wait until Rancho finds out the whole story.

They got beat by Sims, the linebacker, on the goal line and also Sims, the fullback, who scored the winning touchdown.

One he never saw. That’s right. Sims never saw the touchdown he scored.

Sims was basically blind as he crossed the goal line with 8:23 left in the fourth quarter. It was an 18-yard score that literally was a blur.

“The second I ran into the line,” Sims said, “someone hit my helmet and knocked loose by chinstrap. My helmet was driven into my head and into my eyes. I got dizzy. My eye(sight) was blurry.

“I didn’t know where I was exactly but I knew where the end zone was. I ran in that general direction. My eyes were watering. I lost sight where I was. I was just running. Just running.”

To borrow an old pro football line, Sims was running to daylight, except this was nighttime.

Sims crossed what he felt was the goal line and dropped immediately to his knees. Medical personnel, coaching staff and teammates ran to him. That he eventually rose to his knees, considering how quickly he fell to the ground, was unexpected.

But, as it turned out, that 18-yard touchdown run was just the warm-up act that was to follow with 4.8 seconds left in the game. The game had some jabs and bobs and weaves and until late in that fourth quarter it was the prototype for two teams running the ball. Nothing, it seemed, was going to happen suddenly with these two running teams. Results would come slow.

Oh boy, did a few seconds turn all that on its ear.

“I’m on Cloud Nine right now,” Sims said afterward.

And, odd as this may read, Rancho Cotate should have felt the same way. The Cougars didn’t, couldn’t, of course, but they earned that right. They most certainly did.