The Santa Rosa Junior College Football team won their season opener Saturday night 34-21 against City College of San Francisco at Bailey Field, defeating their rivals for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The City College of San Francisco Rams (0-1) entered the season ranked No.6 in the CCCAA. While SRJC (1-0) came into the game unranked, having not beaten the Rams since 2006.
After a scoreless first quarter, the Bear Cubs dominated the Rams in the final three periods, only trailing for five minutes and 15 seconds of the entire game.
The only stretch where the game seemed to be going San Francisco’s way came after a SRJC blocked field goal was returned 80 yards for a touchdown by Rams linebacker Jalen Camp in the closing seconds of the first half. The scoop and score tied the game at 14-14 and sucked the energy out of the home fans.
“The blocked field goal was kind of a fluke play,” SRJC head coach Lenny Wagner said. “I didn’t want to give too much credit to that, especially after we played such a strong half of football. At halftime I told our guys to just ‘trust the process’.”
San Francisco came out of the break and forced a quick Bear Cubs three and out and then moved the ball 49 yards in three plays, with help from two costly SRJC unsportsmanlike penalties, scoring and going up 21-14.
SRJC responded quickly, marching 73 yards on eight plays in less than three minutes. The drive was capped off with a 30-yard touchdown pass from sophomore quarterback Chase Vehmeyer to sophomore wideout Ian Hocheder.
The Bear Cubs never looked back, scoring two more touchdowns including a hard fought 21-yard touchdown run by sophomore running back Keith Gallon that put SRJC up 34-21 with just over 12 minutes left on the game clock. The score sent the home crowd into a frenzy and put an exclamation mark on a 20-0 run by SRJC.
In response, the Rams quickly moved down the field and tried to punch the ball in from SRJC’s goal line on a 4th and goal with just over seven minutes left in the game. The attempt was stopped by a Bear Cubs defense that was tough all night. The goal line stand all but sealed the win for SRJC.
Vehmeyer, in his first game at SRJC, completed 16 of 24 passing attempts with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He also rushed 13 times for 67 yards.
“Chase was awesome, he did everything we asked him to do,” Wagner said. “He took hard hits, made a lot of smart decisions with the ball, took his chances when they were there, and just really played a solid football game.”
Bear Cubs’ sophomore running back Damien Escarcega rushed 20 times for 113 yards and a touchdown and hauled in one catch for seven yards.
Vehmeyer spread the ball around to 10 different receivers throughout the game, led by freshman wide receiver Jovon Scott who had five catches for 52 yards and a touchdown.
“There are about five or six guys on our team that didn’t have a catch that are really good receivers too, and we’re going to need them going through the season,” Wagner said.
The Bear Cubs have another tough matchup next week as they travel to preseason No.10 ranked Modesto Junior College (1-0).
