FREMONT — After waiting for his assistant coaches to address his team, Irvington coach Anthony Jackson bounded up to his players with trademark enthusiasm and uttered two simple words.
“I’m back!”
Irvington didn’t make it easy. At times, especially late in the game, the Vikings actively made it much harder on themselves than they needed to.
But as its coach returned from a two-game suspension on Thursday night against Washington-Fremont, what mattered most afterward was that Irvington had secured a 21-16 win over the Huskies, however it came about.
“Accept the challenge, right?” Jackson told his team after the game. “It don’t matter who shows up. When we on our game, we can beat anybody on our schedule.”
It wasn’t pretty. And in the final minute, the game action defied belief.
But when the whistle sounded on the game’s final play, a desperation heave batted down by Irvington’s Gabriel Aruwah, the victory was just as sweet as the Vikings could have hoped for.
“We just pushed through adversity,” Aruwah said. “We had to do what we had to do to win.”
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