How Hutchinson JUCO football won the NJCAA national title in a 105-second span
Back in September, the Hutchinson Community College football team came up with a defensive stop on its goal line with the game on the line to beat Iowa Western.
Three months later, this time with the NJCAA Division I national championship at stake, the same situation played out between the same teams with the same result.
Hutchinson’s defense once again came up clutch to force a critical incompletion on fourth down. The stop sealed the Blue Dragons’ second national title in program history with a 28-23 victory over No. 1-ranked Iowa Western, the two-time defending champions, on Wednesday at Buffalo Stadium in Canyon, Texas.
Both titles have been won under head coach Drew Dallas, who led the Blue Dragons to their first national championship in his first season in 2021.
“I’m just proud of these guys with all of the adversity we faced all year,” Dallas told the ESPN+ broadcast afterward. “That’s what it’s about. I love them and I’m so stoked for them to experience this and battling back. They won it. They wanted it and they came and earned it tonight. It wasn’t pretty, but we found a way.”
Much like the Sept. 7 classic at Iowa Western, where the Reivers scored a last-second touchdown and went for the win and two-point conversion in a 38-37 victory for the Blue Dragons, Wednesday’s game came down to the end with the ball in the hands of Iowa Western star quarterback Hunter Dekkers, a former starter at Iowa State.
On fourth-and-5 with 1:01 remaining, 11 yards away from the end zone, Iowa Western dialed up a passing play with all five possible receivers going out for routes. That’s important to note because Hutchinson sent linebacker JaQuel Mack on a blitz and he had a free sprint to the quarterback, which forced Dekkers to rush his throw to avoid a sack and sail an incompletion that was nearly picked off by safety Avian Rice.
The incompletion set off a wild celebration on the Hutchinson sideline, which was soon followed by the customary ice bath for the winning coach.
“Winning is hard and it’s really hard when you get to these rounds,” Dallas said. “But we found a way to do it and win two of them here in the postseason.”
After the Blue Dragons rolled their way into the final in a 63-21 semifinal win at No. 2 Georgia Military on Dec. 8, there was no coasting on Wednesday. In fact, Hutchinson dug itself in a 14-point hole after Dekkers threw two touchdown passes on the Reivers’ first two possessions of the game.
But Hutchinson steadily climbed back into the game, as star quarterback Samari Collier, a Coastal Carolina recruit, scored on a 27-yard run and then threw an 8-yard score to Benson Prosper early in the third quarter to trim the deficit to 17-14.
The game took a wild swing later in the third quarter when Collier exited the game with a knee injury. On his first throw of the game, backup quarterback Christian Johnson dropped back and launched a 34-yard touchdown pass to Tre Brown for a 21-17 lead with 5:11 left. It was Johnson’s only completion of the game.
After Hutchinson’s defense forced a three-and-out, Kordell Gouldsby retrieved the punt on his own 27-yard line, raced up the middle of the field past Iowa Western’s coverage team, made one move that left the punter flailing and sprinted to the end zone for a 73-yard touchdown.
In just 105 seconds, Hutchinson had completely flipped the game — turning a four-point deficit into a 28-17 lead that ultimately won the Blue Dragons the game.
“They’re just resilient and that’s what it takes to win a national championship,” Dallas said. “Those (past) moments prepared them for today. We had to bounce back in a big way and we did and I’m proud of them.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2024 at 6:02 AM.
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