Once upon a time, legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi famously said that football “is a game of inches.”
That was certainly the case on Friday night at Valley Stadium.
Third-ranked Ankeny nearly won a showdown against No. 14 Valley on the final play of regulation, when a 32-yard field-goal attempt by Canden Ganahl sailed over the right post. However, the kick was ruled no good by a matter of inches–sending the game into overtime tied at 21-21.
The Tigers went on to post a 36-35 victory in double overtime.
“We’re not going to blame it on one person,” said Ankeny coach Jeff Bauer, whose team dropped to 6-2 on the season. “Obviously, Canden’s good. It’s only the third field-goal attempt he’s tried all year. We all thought it was good. Unfortunately, he just missed it a little right.”
Valley (5-3) took a 28-21 lead when Blake Dorenkamp ran 5 yards for a touchdown on the Tigers’ third play in the first overtime. Ankeny immediately answered with a 10-yard scoring pass from Mason Machan to Quin Somers.
The Hawks got the ball first in the second overtime and took a 35-28 lead on a 3-yard run by Dawson Whitinger on third down. Whitinger ran for 106 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries.
“I felt like we had a chance to win it,” Somers said.
Valley responded, though, with three consecutive runs by Dorenkamp, who bulled his way into the end zone from 3 yards out to cut Ankeny’s lead to 35-34. He finished with 90 yards on 24 carries, surpassing the 1,000-yard mark for the season.
After calling a timeout, the Tigers elected to go for the win. Quarterback Jack Tracy then passed to Brayden Schoeberl for the walk-off two-point conversion.
“I think in the second overtime, you kind of feel like you have to (go for the win),” Bauer said of the strategy by Valley coach Gary Swenson. “I thought about it the first time, but we scored too quickly and so we kicked it. I had faith in our defense to stop them, but we just didn’t get it done tonight.”
Ankeny lost despite running 70 offensive plays to just 45 for the Tigers. The Hawks outgained Valley by a 426-230 margin.
“We just had to take advantage of our opportunities in the first half,” Somers said. “We need to take care of the ball more.”
Ankeny dominated much of the first two quarters but went to the locker room trailing at halftime, 14-7. The Hawks lost two fumbles and also had a punt blocked for a Valley touchdown, allowing the Tigers to overcome an early 7-0 deficit.
“Those turnovers in the first half really hurt us,” Bauer said. “We had a lot of mistakes by guys that don’t usually make them.”
Ankeny got off to a fast start, driving 75 yards in five plays on its opening possession. Caleb Alhussaini had runs of 14 and 35 yards to set up a 14-yard touchdown run by Whitinger with 8 minutes 9 seconds left in the first quarter.
Alhussaini had a busy night for the Hawks, racking up 97 total yards out of the backfield. He ran 14 times for 88 yards and also caught seven passes for 9 more.
On Valley’s ensuing possession, Whitinger forced a fumble by Tracy near the goal line. The ball was recovered by Ankeny’s Ace Parton at the 2-yard line.
After picking up one first down, the Hawks were forced to punt. The Tigers then tied the game when Alec McClinton blocked the kick by Clayton Gardner and pounced on the ball before it rolled out of the end zone.
McClinton, a senior linebacker, made some more big plays in the second quarter. He recovered an Ankeny fumble at Valley’s 4-yard line on the next possession, then later sacked Machan and forced a fumble that was recovered by teammate Ben Fleming.
Three plays later, the Tigers took a 14-7 lead when Tracy scrambled to his right and found a wide-open Blake Weldin behind the Ankeny defense for a 47-yard touchdown with 2:10 left in the half.
“Defensively, we gave up a couple of big passes that was not like us,” Bauer said. “Those were mental mistakes that should not have been made.”
The Hawks tied the game at 14-14 with a 10-play, 85-yard drive in the third quarter. Cooper McDowell got things going with a 30-yard run, Whitinger broke loose for a 27-yard gain, and Devan Goode capped the drive with a 2-yard run over the left side.
Ankeny’s Logan Wirtz intercepted a pass that slipped out of Tracy’s hand on Valley’s next possession, setting up the Hawks’ go-ahead score.
Tight end Garrett Bauer turned a short pass from Machan into a 27-yard touchdown with 9:39 remaining, giving his team a 21-14 advantage. It was the first touchdown of Bauer’s career.
The Tigers then drove 63 yards in six plays to tie the score, getting a huge lift from backup quarterback Holden Cathcart after Tracy was briefly knocked out of the game. Cathcart completed passes of 12 and 42 yards to Schoeberl to set up his 10-yard touchdown pass to Mario Sciorrotta with 6:22 left.
After an exchange of punts, Ankeny quickly drove down the field in the final minute behind Machan, who completed 20-of-24 passes for 158 yards. He fired a 36-yard strike to a diving Jamello Cooper with 1 second left to set up the field goal try that went just awry.
“We had a lot of chances to win it,” Bauer said. “But we’ll be all right. Hopefully, we’ll learn from it and get back to work. We’ve got to fix some of those things.”
The loss will likely drop Ankeny at least one spot in the next Class 5A RPI rankings on Monday. However, the Hawks could still be the highest-ranked team with two losses behind the trio of one-loss squads in Dowling Catholic, Johnston and Southeast Polk.
The Rams fell from the unbeaten ranks with a 38-30 loss at Johnston on Friday.
“We’ll see what happens. I think we’ll have a pretty good idea of where we stand after all the results are in tonight,” Bauer said. “But when we get to the playoffs, it’s all about the matchups. There’s a lot of luck involved with this.”
Ankeny will close out the regular season on Friday by hosting Council Bluffs Lincoln (3-5). The Lynx are coming off a 55-7 loss to No. 5 Sioux City East.
“We have to get back to it at practice this week and see what we can do in the playoffs,” Somers said. “This (loss) is obviously going to hurt, but it won’t do too much to us. We’ve just got to do what we got to do.”
