By Bill Murphy
[email protected]
New Hampshire has reached the semi-final stage of the 2020 football play-offs and all three area teams are still alive and kicking going into Saturday play. Newport the top seed in Division IV looks strong and is considered a heavy favorite to not only defeat Fall Mountain at home at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, but to also bring home the state crown in the sport. Stevens, who treated their fans and themselves to some high stakes double overtime heroics last Saturday, hits the road to travel to Winnisquam with a 1 p.m. kick-off slated.
The plight of the Newport Tigers is sometimes decided by what division they end up in each year. The team is strong most seasons, but, sometimes the strength of schedule takes its toll on the depth of schools like Newport, with smaller enrollments. In this fall of 2020, it probably didn’t matter if John Proper’s eleven was in Division III or Division IV. They would likely have been play-off contenders regardless. They are the cream of the crop of this years’ Division IV however, upsets can always be a part of the game. Fall Mountain Coach Orion Binney knows exactly where his team stands and he feels his Wildcats have earned their spot in the Final Four. He also knows what the so called experts say and realizes the first contest between these two teams with Newport winning 46-0 with 326 rushing yards to their credit, was no mirage.
But. He has also been around long enough to witness very improbable upsets in his lifetime. A bounce here and a call here and a mistake there and the favorite is in a position of being in a hole they have never seen before and somehow momentum is tough to grab. Binney told us, “we are pushing for a little bit more. When we played them before, they beat us up pretty good. We have to tackle better, we have to be better on offense and take care of the ball. The truth is, we have to play close to a perfect game.”
The Wildcats didn’t have long to savor their 40-8 play-off victory over Franklin before focusing on the Tigers. The Cats didn’t face much of a challenge in racing out to a 34-0 halftime advantage, similar to the 37-0 lead Newport also enjoyed over Mascoma at intermission. Looking back, Binney mentioned, “we played extremely well in that half, but, it will have to be even better this week.”
The Fall Mountain scores were by Tyler Swain on an 18-yard run, Hunter Bailey on a 1 yard plunge, then Issac Westover ran 5 yards, and then Swain, who missed the majority of the season with an injury, completed the scoring on the day with impressive runs of 7, 21 and 30 yards before the afternoon concluded. Garrett Menter added four kicked extra points. Alex Flynn stood out on defense with 15 tackles.
Newport showed in their opening game that they would be a tough team to be reckoned with this fall. They traveled to Lebanon, who was a Division II finalist last fall, and played them to a standstill in a 7-6 loss. They answered the bell every other week, most impressively with a 41-14 conquest of Monadnock. Newport Coach John Proper said before the Lebanon game he felt his team could compete with the Raiders. Many wondered why he felt so strongly.
Proper said, “we had freshman who were undefeated against Lebanon and many JV teams from strong programs, so we knew coming in, we could compete with these teams. We thought we had the guys up front who could hold their own. I’ve worked with these players for a long time. More than anything, they hate to lose. If we keep doing what we are doing, it is going to be hard to stop us.” The final tally versus Mascoma was 44-6 with the only touchdown scored against them on a kick-off return. Jagger Lovely rushed for 162 yards and a couple of touchdowns against Mascoma. Also scoring touchdowns were Josh Sharron, Marius Edwards, Bryce Willey and Ryder Lovely. Edwards added two extra point conversions and he threw a two point conversion pass to Tanner Proper and ran in a two point conversion, as did Sharron.
The Stevens 22-21 down to the final whistle victory over Laconia was something to write home about. Winning coach Paul Silva says, “We were evenly matched and we both made our mistakes. Without some of our four turnovers, I thought we could have won without going into double overtime.”
It was the double overtime which placed this encounter in consideration to be labeled a classic. Laconia had the first opportunity in the second overtime and put up seven points. Luke Forrest then tallied an all-important six points with a one-yard TD plunge. Silva, after consulting with his seniors, decided to go all in, attempting a two point.win or go home conversion. How did he arrive at what play to run?
“That was easy,” the veteran coach pointed out. “We were going with the same play we scored two touchdowns on.
But. That wasn’t as easy as he thought. If the Cardinals had executed the play as it was drawn up, maybe. “I believe when you have a play which keeps working, you stick with it until they show they can stop it.”
Well, the Cardinals never had a chance to run the play.. Stevens quarterback Owen Taylor fumbled the snap. Silva had already realized the game was over…..when it wasn’t. “I thought he fumbled the ball and I thought he went to the ground in a pile to recover it then all of a sudden, he was heading left with the ball. Somehow he scooped it up near the line of scrimmage, ran to his left and ended up in the end zone.,” he said. And Stevens lived to play tomorrow.
Sunday is a match with Winnisquam “who we won’t be able to afford to turn the ball over as many times against. They have one of the better quarterbacks around and they have won two straight Division IV championships, Silva noted.
Silva saw his team fall behind against Laconia, “we played very well defensively after they went ahead 7-0.” Laconia led 7-6 at the half as Taylor hooked up with Braxton LeBlanc on a 23 yard scoring play.. Silva’s eleven moved ahead 14-7 in the third quarter with Luke Forrest scoring his first of two touchdowns from two yards out on Stevens most functional play. Forrest repeated the play for the two point conversion.
Early in the fourth quarter, one of those four turnovers in the form of a blocked punt, set up Laconia to tie things up at 14-14 and the game played out without a score, thanks to a clever interception by Cardinal Jai-Lique Ribeiro, sending the contest to overtime, where the defenses stood tall during the first session.
Then Laconia scored and converted to take their 21-14 lead and Forrest repeated the magic play to make it 21-20 from the 1 — and they decided to go for two. (Silva-”I prefer to go for two most of the time. You are never going to get 100% of anything and chances are pretty good to get at least one out of every two when you believe you have a play that will work.”)
Silva called the play and his team stood ready to execute what had worked so many times already on this day. Did he go to the well one too many a time?
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.