Bears Defeat The Knights
Story written by: Mike Woicicki
The Summerville Bears opened the 2024 football season with a 24–21 victory over the Ripon Christian Knights on a very cool August night. The old adage, It’s not over till it’s over, really makes sense to me now.
The Bear’s first drive was a negative disaster, and it looked like the Knights might control the game, but the Bears kept their cool and scored the first TD of the game in the first quarter on a Bryce Leveroos ten-yard run. Leveroos followed that up with a fourteen-yard TD early in the second quarter, and the Bears went up 14 to 0 with Bryson Benites kicking both extra points.
The Knights responded quickly, though, with a 65-yard TD pass and a recovered fumble for a TD, and the score was tied at fourteen. With just over a minute left in the half, it looked like the scoring was over, but the Bears drove down the field from their own 7-yard line to the Knights 35, and with one second left, Bryson Benites kicked a 42-yard field goal to give the Bears a three-point lead.
In the third quarter, Leveroos ran another one in from 14 yards out to make it a ten-point game. Not to be denied, the Knights ran one in from a yard out, and with six minutes left in the game, the Summerville lead was just three. Then the Bears did what they had to do. They drove the ball down the field and used up the final six minutes to walk away with a 24-to-21 win.
Bryce Leveroos was the Black Oak Casino player of the game, running for 209 yards on 28 carries and scoring all three touchdowns.
The Bears will play game two of the 2024 season next Friday in Denair.
Bret Harte and Calaveras’s first game of the season is next Friday night.
