Ashbury wins thriller off Latvian’s leg
Reinis Ustubs’s dramatic, last-second kick to win the Ontario high school football Independent Bowl resonated all the way from a campus in Rockcliffe Park to another capital city in Riga.
The Latvian-born Grade 10 boarding student ran out onto the field with no time remaining on the clock to boot an improbable 37-yard, game-winning field goal to carry the Ashbury College Colts to an incredible 24-21 win over North York’s Chaminade College Monday at TD Place in the first of nine championships at the OFSAA Football Bowls Series.
Ustubs’s end-over-end kick capped an almost unbelievable final minute when Chaminade stole a page from the playbook of the 2009 Saskatchewan Roughriders and got nailed for too many men on the field on what should have been the game’s final play. Worse, it came after Chaminade returned a punt by — who else? — Ustubs some 75 yards as the clock went to 0:00.
With two penalty flags on the field and no way the game could end on a penalty, officials brought the ball all the way back to the Chaminade 30-yard-line and left the rest to long-snapper Alexandre Lefebvre, holder Huzaifah Rana and the Latvian leg of Ustubs.
With the South Side stands filled with anxious Ashbury parents and students, the ball came back to Rana, who fumbled it, cradled it flat on the ground, then straightened it up just in time for Ustubs to kick it through the west-end uprights, setting off a wild on-field celebration.
“I thought the game was over” on the punt return, said Ustubs, the big man on campus for at least the rest of this week. “I was very upset because I went for the tackle and missed.”
Then the flags, the march back, one more play and one huge chance for redemption.
“I felt like I could make it,” said Ustubs, who was also 3-for-3 on converts in winding up his first year of senior football. “And I know the snap was kind of fumbled, but I was just hoping the ball would be there when I kicked it.
“Once it was in the air, I was pretty sure I had it.”
It’s doubtful Ustubs ever saw the ball go through the uprights because he was mobbed before the officials raised their arms to signal it good.
Fortunately, Ashbury defensive back John Li caught it on video and promised to forward a copy later.
“That was unbelievable,” said holder Rana, who doubles as Ashbury’s quarterback and went 15for-30 for 173 yards passing with two touchdown throws and another two that went for interceptions. “For Reinis to make that kick is unbelievable.
“The ball kinda rolled on me and I just got it straight when he hit it. Incredible.”
Rana, the one-time Orleans Bengal, capped quite a four-year run at Ashbury by getting the ball down in time.
In Grade 9, he left the field at TD Place having just beaten Barrhaven’s St. Joseph’s in the final.
And he ran off the field at TD Place, again a winner, with a couple of months to figure out if he’s going to an American prep school next year or even an American high school, likely on his way to an American university.
The victory capped an almost perfect season for Ashbury.
The only team to beat them all year was St. Pete’s in Orleans, who beat Ashbury 21-10 in the regular season and 31-21 in the national capital final Nov. 10.
“We have a great rivalry with St. Peter’s ... they have quite the team,” said Ashbury head coach Jon Landon after his school’s first Bowl appearance since 2002. “But this was amazing.
“I saw the flags early so I knew (the return) was coming back. Then (Rana) says, ‘Let’s take one shot down the field’ and I thought, ‘No, let’s go for the field goal.
“We don’t practise it a lot ... probably not enough. But this was a great way to end a season.”
Landon said if the game had a “TSN turning point,” it had to be wall-like, goal-line stand with 5:43 remaining in the game to keep it tied.
At first-and-goal from the Ashbury one, Chaminade quarterback Kenneth Williams missed a wideopen receiver in the back of the end zone on second down, then called his own number on third down and was stuffed.
“That is one big, strong team,” said Landon, especially referring to five-foot-10, 215-pound running back Christopher John. “Personally, I may have run (John) on every play.”
Chaminade jumped to an early lead on a touchdown run by John, but the teams were tied 7-7 after a quarter with Rana hitting Carter Harris-Fowell for a major.
The visitors seemed to take charge with a 21-7 lead on touchdowns by John, again, and Johari Hastings.
But Ashbury battled back to tie it 21-21 at the half with Zachary Bruketa barging his way into the end zone and Rana connecting with Harris-Fowell.
Both teams stalled on drives in the third, setting up all the drama at the end.