College of the Redwoods’ football team has made progress in certain areas, but is still in search of its first win six games into its first season in the Norcal National Division for the California Community College Athletic Association since 2003. They fell on the road to Sierra on Saturday by the final of 57-34 in their first conference game of the year.
Redwoods actually had more first downs than Sierra, 28 to 26, and got plenty of help from an explosive passing game courtesy of quarterback Devon Forehand and receiver Darron Dodd, who accumulated seven catches for 206 yards and three touchdowns. But Sierra had two different passers with three touchdowns apiece and managed 597 yards of total offense in the win, as the Wolverines improved to 2-4 (1-0 conference).
CR scored first at 12:44 of the first quarter with a 48-yard Forehand-to-Dodd pass connection, however, Sierra scored the next three touchdowns. Redwoods fought back to within a score at 21-13 a little over halfway through the second quarter when Dodd hauled in a 46-yard pass from Forehand, but Sierra added on before half with two more touchdowns. Dodd scored his third TD of the day on a 12-yard reception in the third quarter, and Justice Anthony tallied a 14-yard catch to bring Redwoods within 36-27, but the Wolverines were too much on this day, scoring three more touchdowns before the 10-minute mark of the fourth quarter. Bryton Livingston scored on a nine-yard run late for CR to account for the end margin.
“I think we’re making progress offensively,” said Redwoods head coach Jason White. “And we scored our highest point total; Devon and Darron are both playing well. We moved Quinton Buckland, who started at quarterback the first two games, to receiver, and he’s a dynamic athlete that brings a lot to the table. We’re maturing as an offense, but we have seven freshmen starting right now. So that takes a lot of teaching and even among the four returners, only one guy started last year. It’s been a work in progress for us offensively, but we’re definitely making strides at this point.”
CR gave up a 55-yard run to Josh Hamilton, who finished with 15 carries for 146 yards and a score for the Wolverines, who had 374 passing yards, and White said that “giving up 57 points is never good. We kind of need to get back to playing like we were the first couple weeks with that confidence that we had at the beginning of the season. That’s where we’re at right now, but the big thing I felt good about was special teams. We blocked a field goal, and our kickoff return team played as well as they have this year. Our starting field position’s been pretty horrible and this week we started between the 30 and 40 on a regular basis. That was definitely nice.”
White also was encouraged by coming back from three touchdowns down and nearly drawing to within one score.
“Our players are still fighting right now, and I’m proud of that,” he said.
Asked about the exploits of his QB and wideout, he said, “I don’t think we’ve had a receiver since I’ve been a part of this program catch three touchdowns in a game, so that was a huge day for him and we felt we had a good matchup in the secondary with our receivers. We went into the game planning to throw the ball, and Devon made a lot of good decisions.”
Moving ahead to another road conference matchup against winless Shasta this weekend, White said the message was, “Just get one, right now, worry about the next one. I try to keep things as simple as I can and I’m honest; I’m not going to pull one over on our kids and try to trick them or anything. We’ll just keep working to get better and win the next one. This is the first time we’ve played in the National league since 2003, and we’ve had to make some adjustments, figuring out what it’s like to play at this level with a young team, it kind of being a double-edged sword. But I feel like we are making progress and we’re not far off. That’s our goal, to earn that first win at this level.”
Redwoods kicks off at Shasta at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
Ken McCanless can be reached at 707-441-0526.
