INLAND FIELDHOUSE

RIVERSIDE – What impressed me most about the Fontana Kaiser-Riverside Ramona varsity football game on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2024, was the Rams’ four-quarter mentality.

The Rams were down 10-0 but refused to quit, safe in the knowledge that they’d stick around long enough for an opportunity to present itself – and then it did when the Cats couldn’t keep it together and turned the ball over twice in the fourth quarter.

Bill Cardosi: “It’s about us, in my opinion. A lot of things, a lot of adversity that we didn’t overcome. A lot of stuff was on us. Lack of execution and even at the end of the game we couldn’t throw it and we had a guy open. We couldn’t make a throw when we needed one. We couldn’t make a play when we needed one. We put it on the ground when we needed it, and Ken (Mushinskie) goes a great job with his coaching staff – and so do we – but Ken does a good job coaching. We battled them last year and coming down the wire I made a mistake on the interception – I said the wrong number and (Holmes-Guerrero) didn’t catch it – and so our back was in protection the wrong way and you can blame me for that one. I’ll wear that all day. A more mature group would catch that but that’s on me. All on me. There were some other things that were our fault throughout the game. I feel like we didn’t run it as good as we could have. We just didn’t manage as well as I think we could have. Our running backs are better than how they played. I think our offensive line is better than how it played. And you have to give Ramona credit. You can’t just blame yourself. Ken did a great job getting his players prepared for how we play our offense, and our guys weren’t prepared. We thought it was going to be easy because we had an easy time with Arroyo, and we told them it wasn’t going to be easy.”

Ken Mushinskie: “We talked about Week 0 quite a bit. It’s tough to go on a Thursday and have a tough loss against North and then come back home the next Thursday and play another game against a super physical Kaiser team. The kids played hard and we talked about staying mentally tough and that was the word of the week – being mentally tough and tonight they showed it. Kaiser last year did the same thing and we knew it was going to be a grind. We were going to have to play four quarters of football and that’s exactly what it took.”

Kaiser – 3 – 7 – 0 – 7 — 17
Ramona – 0 – 7 – 0 – 21 — 28
First quarter
K – Lopez 37 FG, 1:49
Second quarter
K – Tyler 30 run (Lopez kick), 3:16
R – Mendoza pass from Acosta (McAllister kick), 0:39
Third quarter
No scoring
Fourth quarter
R – Valenzuela 17 pass from Acosta (McAllister kick), 9:12
K – Tyler 1 run (Lopez kick), 3:53
R – Tolbert 5 run (McAllister kick), 2:19
R – Mesa 63 int. return (McAllister kick), 0:12
Team statistics
Total plays – Kaiser 66; Ramona 46.
First downs – Kaiser 17; Ramona 9.
Penalties – Kaiser 9-97; Ramona 7-58.
Turnovers – Kaiser 2; Ramona 0.
Individual statistics
Rushing – Kaiser: Tyler 29-158, Tucker 8-70, Holmes-Guerrero 7-34, Afutiti 7-32; Ramona: Tolbert 12-97, Valenzuela 1-(minus-1), Acosta 8-(minus-5).
Passing – Kaiser: Holmes-Guerrero 3-10-48-1; Ramona: Acosta 10-15-142-0.
Receiving – Kaiser: Llamas 2-26, Clark 1-20; Ramona: Mendoza 4-69, Valenzuela 1-66, Lerma 1-4, Tolbert 1-3.
Interceptions – Kaiser: None. Ramona: Mesa 1-63.