Junior cornerback Ayden Celis recovered a fumble at San Fernando\u2019s 22-yard line with 1:27 remaining and the second-seeded Tigers held on to beat No. 1-seeded Cleveland 21-14 at Birmingham High.<\/p>\n
It was the ninth City title for San Fernando (11-3) and its first since 2017.<\/p>\n
Melvin Pineda plowed into the end zone on fourth and goal from the one-yard line to end San Fernando\u2019s first drive and, after teammate Brandan Marshall recovered a fumble at the Tigers\u2019 46, Pineda capped the ensuing possession with another one-yard touchdown, his sixth of the playoffs, to make it 14-0.<\/p>\n
Cleveland marched to San Fernando\u2019s eight-yard line late in the second quarter but a 25-yard field-goal attempt by Samael Cerritos hit the left upright.<\/p>\n
Oluwafemi Okeola intercepted an overthrown pass at the San Fernando 46 early in the third quarter and nine plays later quarterback Domenik Fuentes scored on a three-yard keeper to pull the top-seeded Cavaliers within eight.<\/p>\n
Three runs by Brandon Maldonado gained 37 yards to set up Fuentes\u2019 one-yard plunge and a two-point conversion run by Joseph Hurtado that tied the score, 14-14, with 9:33 left.<\/p>\n
San Fernando responded with a 75-yard drive, regaining the lead on a two-yard run by Andrew Newchurch, his 16th touchdown of the season, and a clutch extra point by Isaac Ortega with 4:36 remaining in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was probably my last [high school] football game and we got the win,\u201d Newchurch said. \u201cThe play was overload left and it was wide open. We\u2019re proud to add to the school legacy \u2014 we hadn\u2019t won City in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers lost to eventual-champion Chatsworth in the first round of the Division II playoffs last season. <\/p>\n
Cleveland (5-9) was seeking its first City title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Junior cornerback Ayden Celis recovered a fumble at San Fernando\u2019s 22-yard line with 1:27 remaining and the second-seeded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[43464,43459,43463,13507,17949,774,423,48,52,51,43461,21023,47,50,49,43460,43462,3238,2668,43457,43458],"class_list":["post-74606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-25-yard-field-goal-attempt","tag-andrew-newchurch","tag-brandon-maldonado","tag-cleveland","tag-first-drive","tag-fumble","tag-game","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-left-upright","tag-line","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-melvin-pineda","tag-one-yard-plunge","tag-play","tag-run","tag-san-fernando","tag-second-seeded-tigers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}