Cronk Call Wins for Cal Lutheran

THOUSAND OAKS —  A fan in the stands showered the field with candy in wild celebration, but nothing else was going to rain on the Cal Lutheran football team’s parade.

This victory was too sweet for that.

Tim Cronk kick a 37-yard field goal with four seconds left to lift the Kingsmen to a 19-18 victory over Occidental College in a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game Saturday at Mt. Clef Stadium.

“I’m so speechless right now, I don’t even know what to say,” Cronk said after his kick capped a 10-play, 37-yard drive to the Occidental 19-yard line.

“I just came out here and thought, this is what it all comes down to. We needed to win, we wanted to win. I’m on top of the world right now.”

Joining Cronk up there was Cal Lutheran first-year coach, Scott Squires, who watched as the Kingsmen presented him with his first victory as a head coach in dramatic fashion.

“It was a collective effort,” Squires said. “They hung together, and that’s how they won it.”

The Kingsmen (1-4, 1-1 in conference) could easily have fallen apart.

Occidental (0-5, 0-3) took a 9-0 lead on a 25-yard field goal and 25-yard touchdown pass from Merlin DeMartinis to Sterling Chaffins in the first quarter.

Cal Lutheran got to within 9-7 when Billy Busch scored from five yards and Cronk converted the extra point to cap a 70-yard drive at the start of the second quarter.

The third quarter, however, belonged to the Tigers, who looked like they owned the game, too, when the Kingsmen were pinned by a punt at their one-yard line and Busch was tackled in the end zone for a safety with 10:44 to go in the quarter.

The safety was followed four plays later by the second touchdown connection between DeMartinis and Chaffins, this one a 40-yarder that left the Kingsmen trailing, 18-7, with 8:35 remaining in the third quarter.

But backup quarterback Zack Hernandez engineered a fourth-quarter comeback by Cal Lutheran, leading the Kingsmen on scoring drives of 65, 70 and 37 yards.

The 13-play, 65-yard drive lasted 6 minutes 23 seconds and ended with Cronk’s 31-yard field goal that pulled Cal Lutheran to within 18-10 with just over 14 minutes to play.

The 70-yard drive consisted of six running plays, including a 44-yard gain by Hernandez, and was capped by a two-yard run by Fredrik Nanhed that made the score 18-16 with 9:32 to play.

Nanhed, playing for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury in the opener, had 101 yards in 24 carries.

Hernandez, who came on in place of Ryan Huisenga with five minutes to play in the third quarter, completed three of six passes for 38 yards and rushed eight times for 87 yards.