On the starry night of Oct. 13, 2023, the annual rivalry football game took place between Buena High School (Buena) and Ventura High School (Ventura). After losing last year, Ventura came back stronger this time, crushing Buena 35-7.
For two years in a row, Buena took home the Suzanne Brown Memorial Trophy, but Ventura found their historic winning ways and easily ran away with the victory.
Buena won the coin toss and chose to receive the ball first in the second half, which meant they would kick off to Ventura. Ventura’s number eight Mylan Walker ‘24 received the kick. Walker spun, juked and ran his way into the endzone on the first play of the game. Kicker Donovan Chappell ‘24 drilled the extra point giving Ventura the lead 7-0.
Walker reflected on his performance as he stated, “I played pretty good … I had two touchdowns … it was great.”
Ventura attempted an onside kick on Buena and narrowly missed their opportunity to regain possession which gave Buena great field position as they started their first drive. Buena’s first drive wasn’t spectacular though as they were quickly forced to punt. Ventura’s special teams made yet another huge play blocking the punt, giving Ventura incredible field position.
The Cougars capitalized on this field position with a rushing touchdown by Sawyer Cline ‘24. Chappell then makes another extra point, increasing Ventura’s lead to 14-0.
Buena had another unsuccessful drive giving Ventura yet another chance to stretch their lead. Ventura took this opportunity, Derek Garcia ‘26 threw a deep pass to his receiver David Nunez ‘25 who brought in the ball. Ventura easily scored again and with another extra point, they went up 21-0.
The first quarter ended with Buena down 21-0 as they punt the ball again to Ventura. Both sides traded possession until Ventura got the ball with very little time left in the first half. The Cougars drive started small, being forced to 4th down and 15 yards still to go. Ventura got there but they only had 9.7s left to make something happen. Apparently it was enough though, and with a huge pass to Joshua Woodworth ‘24, Ventura got very close to the endzone with 1.7 seconds left on the clock. Ventura went for the touchdown and was successful, earning them a 35-0 lead over Buena after Chappell hit another extra point.
The energy died down in the second half with neither side scoring during the third quarter. During the fourth quarter, Buena got a turnover on downs and successfully built up a scoring drive, making the score 35-7 with a little over six minutes left in the game. Buena refused to give up and successfully completed an onside kick, but the drive was cut short by another turnover on downs, where Ventura ran out the clock leaving the game 35-7, with Ventura victorious.
Each team described the magnitude of the outcome of this game. When asked about what this game meant to the team, Maykan Bolich ‘24 of Buena responded, “this game was basically everything since my first year here … it’s the main game.”
On the other hand, Ventura’s head coach, Tim Garcia, expressed his pleasure as he stated it was “a great night to be a Cougar.”
