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Northwood’s Karim Yowkeem (No. 5) and Danial Kamel celebrate the game-winning field goal by Yowkeem Friday night as time expired. (Photos courtesy Mark Bausman).
Northwood High School placekicker Karim Towkeem made the most of a second chance Friday night, drilling a game winning 21-yard field goal as time expired to lift the Timberwolves to a 17-14 victory over No. 3 seeded Grand Terrace in the quarterfinals of the CIF Division 8 playoffs at Irvine Stadium.
Northwood (11-1) moves on to the semfinals next week against No. 2-seeded Vista Del Lago, which defeated Crean Lutheran 26-21.
Northwood worked for the game-winning field goal and with six seconds left in the game. Yowkeen missed a 25-yard field goal. But the Timberwolves got another chance when Grand Terrace was called for a roughing the kicker penalty to extend the drive.
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Grand Terrance called a couple timeouts to freeze Yowkeem, but with two seconds left on the clock, he came through in the clutch and his teammates mobbed him at the center of the field.
“It was a moment I will never forget,” said Yowkeem. “A huge shoutout to my holder Andrew Penrod, he walked me through everything ….. he tells me ‘put my head down and it will go through’ and a huge shoutout to Coach (Phil) Roh. I missed a few at the beginning of the season but he came back and he worked with me every single day until I was just making everything.”
Yowkeem was thinking before the game-winner:
“We got to make it, we got to send this to semifinals, we got to run it back for another ship, we’re going to make it to the championship, we got to do it.”
Grand Terrace (8-4) had an effective plan of trying to keep the high-powered Northwood offense, which had 63 points last week, off the field as much as it could. Grand Terrace stuck with a ball control, running game, passing just two times and its defense tightend up in the second half after falling behind 14-0 at halftime.
That meant limited opportunies for the Timberwolves Adam Harper, who still rushed for 64 yards on 15 carries and hauled in five catches for 59 yards. Quarterback Eugene Miyata completed 6 of 15 passes for 116 yards.
Grand Terrace tied the game 14-14 when Devion Hooker-McConcio scored on a 7-yard TD run early in the fourth quarter.
Grand Terrace turned the ball over on downs with 4:24 left in the game and a short punt gave Northwood possesion on its own 45-yard line.
On a third and 10 play, Miyata connected with Adam Harper on a 27-yard pass play to give the Timberwolves the ball at the 10.
Harper was stopped trying to put Northwood ahead with a TD. But the Timberwolves were efficient working the remaining time off the clock to set up the game-winning kick.
“We practice every day with the clock running down,” Northwood Coach JC Clarke said. “Karim has hard a hard time in practice sometimes making those extra points and earlier in the year, he was going about 60 percent on extra points.
“But in league, I think he was perfect in league and perfect in the playoffs and he was perfect tonight and we needed him to be perfect. We did not want to go into overtime. They were too talented to go into overtime.”
Harper put Northwood ahead 7-0 on a 17-yard TD in the second quarter off the wildcat formation. The Timberwolves got another TD later in the second quarter when the Titans mishandled a punt, fumbling the ball deep in their own territory and senior Jan Abuelsad recovered in the end zone for a TD to put Northwood ahead 14-0.
Grand Terrace kept battling and running time off the clock in the third quarter, cutting the lead to 14-7 on a 58-yard TD run by Exzavior Oliver with 8:38 left.
But in the end, Northwood was determined to advance to the semifinals. The Timberwolves captured the CIF Division 11 crown last year.
“Going in, we knew it was going to be a tough time stopping their offense,” said Harper, who also plays defense. “It was a challenge on the defense, especially our defensive line. We knew if were going to have a chance to win this game, we would have to physical. Holding these guys to 14 points in pretty insane so I have to give hats off to our defense in this game.”
Harper also liked the ending.
“I had faith in Karim, he’s been great for us and that’s something you dream of, hitting a game winning field goal in the playoffs to put your time up as time expired, and he did that,” Harper said.
Quarterback Devon Gusta led the Grant Terrace offense, rushing for 93 yards on 14 carries.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
