Lee, Brookside Christian dethrone Stone Ridge Christian

STOCKTON Reuben Lee wasn’t in uniform when Brookside Christian lost to Stone Ridge Christian nearly two months ago.

The transfer from Lincoln High made his impact felt Saturday in the rematch.

Lee scored four touchdowns and rushed for 162 yards as Brookside Christian dethroned two-time section champion Stone Ridge Christian, 54-21, to win the Sac-Joaquin Section Division VII Championship at Bear Creek High School.

“I thought we contained him in the beginning,” said Stone Ridge Christian coach David Brooks, who was the acting head coach for Keith Borges, who had to serve a one-game suspension after an ejection last week. “We kept him out of the end zone. Then we had a couple missed tackles and he broke a few.”

Both teams traded turnovers early as they went scoreless on their first two drives.

Brookside Christian (8-4) opened the scoring late in the first quarter as quarterback Quincy Glasper found Stedman Quartermaine for a 6-yard touchdown pass to give BC a 6-0 lead with 1:50 left in the first quarter.

Stone Ridge Christian was plagued by six turnovers in the game, including four interceptions thrown by freshman quarterback Jacob Tanori.

Justin Williams returned the first interception 60 yards for a touchdown to extend the Brookside lead to 12-0 early in the second quarter.

“Turnovers hurt, big time,” Brooks said. “We’re a young team. We’ve got a freshman quarterback. Three of our players in the secondary are freshmen.”

The Brookside Christian defense bottled up Stone Ridge Christian star running back Jonathan Collazo, limiting the senior to just 34 yards on 17 carries.

Players including Owen Thomas, Luke Jenkins and Cole Houweling did their part to get the SRC ground attack going.

Hoeweling and Thomas made tough runs to set up a Shane Casillas 8-yard touchdown to get SRC on the board and cut the BC lead to 12-7 with 7:56 left in the second quarter.

Lee answered later in the half when he broke free for a 55-yard touchdown run to give Brookside Christian a 20-7 lead with 2:42 left in the half.

Stone Ridge Christian had an opportunity late in the half to pull closer, but mismanaged the clock after Collazo recovered a bad snap at the Brookside Christian 17-yard line with under 30 seconds left in the half.

Brooks and his staff thought they had a timeout left and ran a running play down to the BC 9-yard line. Brooks tried to call a timeout, but didn’t have any. Stone Ridge could only get one more snap off, and Tanori threw an incomplete pass as time ran out.

Stone Ridge Christian did strike first in the second half as Thomas intercepted a pass and returned it 39 yards to the BC 1-yard line where Tanori scored on a keeper to cut the lead to 20-14 with 5:25 left in the third quarter.

Brookside Christian answered with a scoring drive as Glasper found Tyrone Vickers for a 14-yard touchdown to go ahead 26-14.

Then Lee took over.

Lee hauled in a 55-yard touchdown pass from Glasper and less than two minutes later, he returned an interception 63 yards for a score to give Brookside Christian a 40-14 lead.

He later added a 34-yard touchdown against the SRC second unit.

“Reuben Lee is a cutback running back and we didn’t expect him to be as fast as he was,” Thomas said. “He’s shifty, too.”

Midway through the second half it became clear Stone Ridge Christian’s bid for a third straight section championship would fall short.

“It’s really sad,” Thomas said. “I feel everyone is down, but this won’t reflect next season. We’re going to come back and do big things. This is only going to motivate us.”

This story was originally published November 19, 2016 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Lee, Brookside Christian dethrone Stone Ridge Christian."