Winston Churchill once said, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The Riverside Beavers may have done well to watch some game film from two seasons ago when Kenston scored 15 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to beat them 36-35 at Bomber Stadium.
Riverside entered Kenston's Homecoming game as heavy favorites and yet history repeated itself.
Following the opening kickoff, the Bomber defense shut down the Beaver offense in their starting drive. Then, Kenston rode running back Will Hamm for a handful of chunk runs to get a Grady Kucharson field goal on the board and take an early 3-0 lead.
Riverside then answered with a long touchdown run to take the lead 7-3 and then forced Kenston to punt it away. The Beavers scored another touchdown, this time through the air, to take a 14-3 lead.
Another Kenston punt and another Riverside score, a 26-yard field goal, created a big hole for Kenston to try to dig out from under.
Junior Adam Barr then came on in relief of Jack Bryner to take the helm at quarterback for the Bomber offense. The move paid immediate dividends as Barr threw for 55 yards on a scoring drive that was capped off by a 2-yard touchdown run by Hamm. That gave the home team some momentum headed into the half.
Kenston received to open the second half and in entered Tucker Meeks to bulldoze Beaver defenders on several key rushing plays. His toughness was rewarded with his first score of the season - a 4 yard touchdown run that brought the game to a 17-17 tie.
Unfortunately, Riverside would score 14 unanswered points to grab a 31-17 lead and it looked like the Beavers might pull away. However, Barr and senior wideout Max George began to cook the Beaver secondary.
On the next two Kenston drives, Barr hit George on successive touchdown passes and set up a scenario where another famous quotation described the drama at hand.
Just like in the 2023 version of the Kenston comeback versus Riverside, head coach Jeff Grubich held up two fingers with less than a minute on the clock. As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all over again."
Instead of kicking a game-tying extra point, Kenston rolled the dice and snatched a 32-31 lead off of a Hamm two-point conversion run with 21 seconds to go.
On the ensuing kickoff, Riverside refused to let the crowd breathe easy, breaking off a 36-yard kickoff return to midfield and needing just a small chunk of yards to potentially attempt a game-winning field goal.
However, senior defensive end Ethan Black brought the pressure on Riverside's first play and forced an incompletion. With only seconds to go, the Beavers completed a short screen pass but the receiver was wrangled quickly by Jake Rostocil, completing the insane comeback for the Bombers. Finally, with one second left, a Beaver Hail Mary was caught near the goal line but the receiver was stopped short of the end zone with no time left.
Barr was the sparkplug the team needed, completing 13-for-15 for 178 yards and the two scores. George delivered several clutch plays and finished the game with 9 receptions for 107 yards and two touchdowns. Hamm continued his steady production with another 100-yard rushing game (102) on 25 carries.
Rostocil and Colin Weiland led the defense with 7 and 8 tackles, respectively, while freshman reserve Teo Triscaro chipped in with some big stops including four key tackles.
The win revitalized Kenston's chances of hosting a home playoff game and they will look to increase those chances even further with another win next week at Mayfield.
