Game of the year in Oregon? Grant outlasts Franklin to keep hopes of 5th consecutive PIL title
Grant 30, Franklin 29
In Friday’s edition of Survivor: PIL at the Marshall complex in Southeast Portland, it appeared as if Grant’s tiki torch had been extinguished.
Ethan Amon’s leaping 23-yard grab between two defenders with 47.4 seconds left had given Franklin a 29-22 lead in the matchup of teams looking to keep alive their PIL championship hopes.
But while a rowdy Lightning student section celebrated in anticipation of ending a five-game losing streak to the Generals dating to 2016, the Grant players rallied on the sideline.
“Yeah, a couple of heads were down,” said junior running back Camari Owens. “The energy was down, but we made sure we got everybody up.”
The Generals got the ball back at their 35, and after an incompletion, they went to work. Junior Braden Baker scrambled for six yards, then hit Aiden Wood on back-to-back sideline routes for 14 and 15 yards.
Finally, with 18 seconds left, Wood streaked down the middle and hauled in a perfect strike from Baker for a 30-yard touchdown pass.
“My boy saw it. It was just an easy post,” Wood said. “I was like, ‘I need to catch this, bro!’ And that’s what happened.”
There was no hesitation about going for two, and there was no stopping Owens, who found a crease over right tackle for the clinching points in a 30-29 victory that kept alive Grant’s hopes of a fifth consecutive PIL title while snuffing out Franklin’s hopes of a first championship since 2001.
“I promise you, I was not going down,” said Owens, who ran for a game-high 152 yards and two touchdowns. “A couple guys tried to get their hands on me, but I was just, ‘Get up off of me. I’m in here.’ It just shows the PIL that we’ve really got fight in us. I hope this puts a scare in other teams that we ain’t nothing to play with.”
The Generals still need to beat Roosevelt in the season finale and hope the Roughriders can defeat Wells in two weeks to create a three-way logjam atop the standings.
The loss was a gut punch to Franklin, which had been outscored 258-20 in the past five meetings between the teams.
“Talk about highs and lows. Holy smokes!” coach Adam Grimes said. “That’s tough. But that’s Grant. They battle. We battled. So, I’m going to tell my team to hold their heads up high, because they battled their butts off. That’s a good football team over there, and if we compete like that in every game, we’re going to be pretty good moving forward.”
The Generals trailed 22-7 midway through the third quarter after Franklin’s Will Reid scored on a 3-yard quarterback keeper, and to that point, they’d punted four times and Baker had thrown two interceptions.
Suddenly, they found a rhythm by feeding Owens the ball. He ran for 130 yards in the second half, including scoring runs of 3 and 45 yards.
“He’s the big guy on our team,” Baker said. “He’s had all these breakout runs. We see him, and it gets our spirits up. He’s a leader, and he led us to that win.”
Photos by Leon Neuschwander
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Grant 30, Franklin 29
Franklin - 9 - 7 - 6 - 7 – 29
Grant - 0 - 7 - 15 - 8 – 30
First quarter
F — Safety, punt snapped out of end zone, 6:38
F — King Solomon Hamilton 5 blocked punt return (Santiago Tengen kick), 2:52
Second quarter
F — Ethan Aman 5 run (Tengen kick), 7:13
G — Aiden Wood 33 pass from Braden Baker (Culby Bovitz kick), 5:22
Third quarter
F — Will Reid 3 run (kick blocked), 5:18
G — Camari Owens 3 run (Bovitz kick), 2:17
G — Owens 45 run (Marcus Rouse run), 0:22
Fourth quarter
F — Aman 23 pass from Reid (Tengen kick), 0:47
G — Wood 30 pass from Baker (Owens run), 0:18
STATISTICS
RUSHING—Franklin: Josiah Heintzman 16-82, Jay Sayre 9-46, Reid 7-22. Total 34-139. Grant: Owens 12-152, Rouse 11-68. Total 27-227.
PASSING—Franklin: Reid 15-28-1-200. Grant: Baker 13-27-3-178.
RECEIVING—Franklin: Aman 5-77, Cash Landau 5-84. Grant: Wood 5-99, Trey Bolds 3-32.
DEFENSE—Franklin: Heintzman 6 tackles, 2 for loss, 2 interceptions; Aman 7 tackles; Vinh Tash 6 tackles; Landau interception, pass breakup. Grant: Jaylin Hill 3 tackles for loss, 2 sacks; Thomas Browning 13 tackles; Deckard Hale 7 tackles; Gianni Torregano 4 tackles, interception, pass breakup.
FIRST DOWNS—Franklin 19, Grant 16. FUMBLES-LOST—Franklin 2-0, Grant 1-0. PENALTIES-YARDS—Franklin 3-20, Grant 7-55.
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STATEWIDE SCOREBOARD
Week 6 predictions: How did we do?
State leaders: Class 6A | Class 5A | Class 4A
Media polls: Class 6A | Class 5A | Class 4A
