Hoover can’t reach win

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — Over the past couple of seasons, the Hoover High football team has absorbed its share of humbling, sometimes crushing, losses.

It’s quite likely that none of them stung as sharply as the 12-8 defeat visiting Sierra Vista dealt Hoover on Thursday at Moyse Field, one in which the Tornadoes shut out the Dons in the second half and had more than one chance to win the game during a fourth quarter full of cruel twists of fate.

“It hurts,” second-year Hoover Coach Chris Long said. “It hurts a lot.”

Shooting for their first win since the last game of the 2006 season and trying to open a season with a win for the first time since 2005, the Tornadoes saw their hopes come down to a fourth-and-one situation at the Dons’ 11-yard line with 40 seconds left in the game.

They never got a chance to pick up that one yard, when a fumbled exchange on a handoff attempt was recovered by the Tornadoes, who were out of timeouts, for a two-yard loss, handing the football and the win to Sierra Vista with 33 seconds remaining.

“It’s horrible. ...This was our win,” defensive lineman Ivan Abarenov said. “We messed up as a team and we’ve gotta get back together as a team and win the next game.”

Hoover’s own offense failed to score in the second half and struggled to keep drives alive after quarterback AJ Pule was knocked out of the game with a knee injury in the closing minutes of the first half.

Senior running back Ivan Tello rushed for 59 of his game-high 138 yards in the second half, but the team went 0 for three in the red zone in the half.

The Tornadoes defense, however, was more than up to the task of keeping the Dons deep in their own territory throughout the final period.

Sierra Vista had negative three yards of total offense in the fourth quarter and was forced to punt from its own 15-yard line with 8:16 to play, leading, 12-6.

From there, the Tornadoes drove 20 yards to the Dons’ 13-yard line, where they faced a fourth-and-11 gut check.

Stephen Choi connected with Elvis Fuentes on a pass that appeared to result in the go-ahead touchdown. But the official nearest to the play immediately ruled that Fuentes, while being tackled on the one-yard line, had fumbled into the end zone for a touchback.