It was only three months ago when Buchanan football players were unsure if they would have a season.
When the Bears finally played their first game on March 19, it had been 15 months since they last faced competition.
“It was a hard, hard 15 months,” said Buchanan head coach Matt Giordano. “I’m just proud of our boys, how they stuck together and believed in each other.”
The long wait paid off for the Bears, who secured their first outright TRAC title since 2009 on Friday night.
Buchanan put away the Clovis East Timberwolves with a 15-point fourth quarter, on its way to a 36-13 win to finish an undefeated 5-0 season.
“I’ve been on this team for three years, and I haven’t felt anything like this,” said senior wide receiver Darrien Gaines.
“This is just surreal.”
Gaines provided an early jolt for Buchanan when he caught a 74-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Jayden Mandal. The score came on the Bears’ third play of the game as they took a 7-0 lead.
Buchanan extended its lead to 14-0 when sophomore Michael Runnels sped around the edge and broke free for a 46-yard touchdown run.
That happened on only Buchanan’s fourth play from scrimmage, giving the Bears a two-touchdown lead midway through the first quarter.
Clovis East put together a long scoring drive capped by senior Jacob Tafoya punching in a 1-yard touchdown run. Tafoya, who played the last game of his high school career on Friday, is headed to play football for the Air Force in the fall.
He rushed for 114 yards on 27 carries along with his touchdown.
Tafoya cut Buchanan’s lead to 14-7 with 9:23 remaining in the second quarter, but once again, the Bears responded with a big play.
Buchanan running back Caden Rodgers broke off a 63-yard run on Buchanan’s next drive. Rodgers finished it off with a 2-yard plunge into the end zone, giving the Bears a 21-7 lead.
The Timberwolves put together a six-minute drive to Buchanan’s 15-yard line, but did not convert on 3rd-and-2. Bryant Thao made a 32-yard field goal to cut the Bears’ lead to 21-10 headed into halftime.
The third quarter only saw three total possessions between the two teams. Thao kicked a 39-yard field goal to finish another time-consuming Clovis East drive, making it a single-possession game as Buchanan led 21-13.
Mandal threw an interception into the end zone on the Bears’ next possession. The turnover gave Clovis East the ball to start the fourth quarter, needing a touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game.
But Buchanan forced the Timberwolves to go three-and-out. The Bears relied heavily on the run game down the stretch to drain time off the clock. With 3:52 remaining, Rodgers delivered the game-sealing touchdown from four yards out to give Buchanan a 28-13 lead.
He scored one more touchdown with 53 seconds left and the Bears converted a trick-play two-point conversion.
Rodgers ended the game with a season-high 160 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Giordano said postgame that the junior running back/linebacker was Buchanan’s “rock on both sides of the ball.”
“What’s scary is that he’s going to have another offseason and another year to work,” Giordano said. “I’m super excited to see how he is as a senior.”
Among Buchanan’s statistical standouts was Gaines, whose early touchdown fueled a five-catch, 97-yard performance on Friday. Gaines said that an undefeated season and TRAC title was something the Bears aimed for all season.
“We went out to practice every single day,” Gaines said. “We came into film sessions every weekend. We knew that our team was special this year and we were going 5-0.”
It was a confident Buchanan team this spring, but Giordano said that humility separated this year’s Bears from previous, also-talented teams that he’s coached.
“They stayed away from pride throughout the whole season and they came in and worked every single day,” Giordano said. “They were coachable. They could have just said ‘No Coach, we beat this team’ or ‘We beat that team’. But they stayed humble throughout this whole process and they stayed together.”
Through the perils of the pandemic, humility and hard work took Buchanan to the top of the TRAC on Friday night, a night that left Buchanan senior Camryn Bracha grinning ear to ear.
“A lot of us didn’t know if we were going to have a season,” Bracha said, “but everyone stuck around and we deserve it. We’ve been working for a long time, over a year now, so I’m happy it all paid off.”