After spending a year in Escalon, the ‘Battle of 120’ trophy was at Engel Field on Friday night … but it didn’t get to stay.

The visiting Oakdale Mustangs were 21-20 overtime winners in a non-league battle with the host Escalon Cougars on Sept. 6 and with the win, the Mustangs earned the right to have the trophy reside in Oakdale for the next year.

It was really the Oakdale squad returning the favor, as Escalon won in The Corral last year and took the trophy from Oakdale to Escalon. This year, it made the return trip.

Escalon Mayor Dave Bellinger and Oakdale Mayor Cherilyn Bairos – with Bellinger carrying the trophy – accompanied their respective football team’s captains to midfield for the ceremonial coin toss on Friday night. Knotted 14-14 after four quarters of football, the teams went to overtime and Oakdale was able to take the win. (See game story in Sports, Page A6.)

“First and foremost, it’s what everybody would hope for,” Escalon varsity head football coach Andrew Beam said of the Friday night overtime thriller. “An Oakdale-Escalon game, we had a great crowd, great atmosphere, we had smashmouth football.”

Following the game, Bellinger presented the trophy to Bairos at midfield and the two shook hands, in hopes that there will be another Battle of 120 to be played next season.

For some of the Cougar players, it was a tough loss but one they want to keep in perspective.

“My quarterback (Logan Huebner), my coach, coach Caton, Sam (injured teammate Sam Jimenez), I mean, they just give me all the confidence in the world, they’re my biggest supporters,” said junior Chase Cummings, who has taken on a larger role in the absence of Jimenez. “I just knew I had to come out here this week and just fight, fight as hard as I could.”

He added that battling back from a 14-0 deficit with two touchdowns in the fourth quarter helped the team members learn a lot about themselves.

“I’m so proud of these guys; I didn’t know if we had it in us but we did,” Cummings said. “We’re all young, we don’t have that much experience, not as much as some of these other teams, but I know we’re going to do big things.”

For junior Ben Ferreira, he said the team rallied in the locker room at halftime, setting the tone for the comeback in the second half.

“We were just trying to get as amped up as possible, it was a new half, a new mentality … we tried to be as positive as possible,” Ferreira said, adding that the comeback against Oakdale to get the game to overtime was huge. “We can compete with anybody, that’s what we proved today.”

Senior David Ingles agreed that forcing overtime gave the team members more belief in themselves and their capabilities, with a lot of new players working in to the mix this season.

“It shows that we can dig deep inside ourselves and I think this is nothing but a building experience, to build on top of,” Ingles said. “Next game we’re going to have a little more to give; that guy in the end zone is going to be open next time, we’re going to figure some things out.”

Junior Lorenzo Teixeira said the team was able to match Oakdale’s intensity and they made some adjustments at halftime that helped them get back in the contest.

“In the second half, just mainly run the ball, and just capitalize off what we were doing at first,” he said of getting back to the ground game and its brand of smashmouth football.

But he also said the team needs to play cleaner and put more points on the board in order to find success.

“The penalties, eliminate the penalties and just keep building on what we already have, the momentum, just not end it so fast,” Teixeira explained of having the offense on the field and converting when the opportunity is there.

Team captain, senior Ryan Lewis, put the loss in perspective.

“Before this game, we all knew it was going to be a hard game. We were excited for this game but we knew it was going to be a dog fight,” Lewis said. “We learned that we have a lot of fight in us; against Golden Valley we didn’t play very well so coach Beam challenged us to prove him wrong; he was doubting us and we finally made him happy, he said he was rejuvenated, which makes me really happy even though we had the loss.”

Escalon has a bye this week, with time to rest, recover and prepare for the tough Trans-Valley League campaign ahead.