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BANGOR – Special teams made for a special evening for the John Bapst High football team.
The Crusaders returned a punt for a touchdown, recovered an onside kick, watched a 41-yard field-goal try come up short and then celebrated as Kyle Gallant’s second-chance 31-yard field goal went though the uprights – all in the game’s final 2 minutes, 35 seconds – to rally past Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln 15-14 in an LTC Class C semifinal at Cameron Stadium on Monday night.
The win advances No. 2 John Bapst (9-1) to Saturday’s 1 p.m. LTC championship game at top-ranked Foxcroft Academy (10-0) in search of its first conference title since 1976.
“High school football is a game about emotion and getting fired up and they were fired up and we needed something to get us back in this game,” said John Bapst senior lineman Charlie Merritt. “Our coaches stress how important special teams are every single day, and that’s what we turned to tonight and they made big plays for us.”
John Bapst needed all the special-teams help it could get, as its offense was shut down after the first quarter by an aggressive Mattanawcook defense led by senior linebacker Nathan Nevells.
The third-ranked Lynx (7-3) nursed a 14-6 lead throughout the second half, until the final minutes when Derek Smith – who missed virtually all of John Bapst’s 22-20 win over MA in Week 2 of the regular season with an ankle injury – gave the Crusaders hope.
Smith caught an MA punt on the run at the Bapst 45, sped to the left sideline and then used a final downfield block by Bill Wetherbee to finish off the 55-yard touchdown return with 2:35 to play.
“I don’t like to put too much on myself but I knew that I needed to get these guys fired up and one way was to get a good return,” said Smith of his third punt return for a touchdown of the season.
“I wasn’t thinking touchdown, touchdown. I was thinking, ‘hey, let’s make something big so these guys will get fired up and we can win these games.'”
Bapst went for a two-point conversion, but Nevells stopped the Crusaders’ Nick Smith well short of the goal line.
Smith instantly made amends, recovering the ensuing onside kick that Gallant caromed off the chest of a Mattanawcook player to give John Bapst the ball at the MA 48 with no timeouts and 2:31 left.
The Crusaders drove to the 23 before being relegated to a 41-yard field goal try by Gallant. The kick was well short, but a roughing-the-kicker penalty against MA gave John Bapst a first down at the 12 with 54 seconds to play.
Again the MA defense was stout, but this time Gallant was within range and his 31-yarder with 4.8 seconds left gave the Crusaders the most dramatic of playoff victories.
“I knew when I hit the first one I didn’t have it, but someone wrenched me so we got a second chance,” said Gallant, who in the first quarter also had a 31-yard try blocked by MA’s Matt Brown. “The whole front line looked me in the eyes and said if they had to block one more time in their lives, this was going to be the time, and they did.”
Gallant (8-of-20 passing, 115 yards) found Wetherbee over the middle with a pass in the final minute of the first quarter, and Wetherbee raced down the right sideline to complete a 58-yard TD pass that gave Bapst a 6-0 lead.
But the Crusaders mustered just 107 yards of total offense the rest of the way, and Mattanawcook took control with two second-quarter scores.
Sophomore fullback Greg Hand (nine carries, 100 yards) went off right tackle 77 yards for a touchdown 17 seconds into the second quarter, and Peter Coggins kicked the extra point to give the Lynx a 7-6 lead.
Jake Smith’s pass interception and 49-yard return set MA up at the John Bapst 28 with 3:37 left in the half, and Coggins – a senior making his first varsity start at quarterback for an injury-plagued MA offense – capitalized on the opportunity.
On third-and-4 from the 12, Coggins scrambled toward the right sideline and fired a strike past two defenders to junior wideout Shawn Cahill in the end zone with 1:47 left in the second quarter. Coggins’ extra-point kick gave MA an eight-point halftime cushion.
But a John Bapst defense anchored by tackle Micah Raymond and linebacker Colin Gagnon held the Lynx scoreless the rest of the way – long enough for the Crusaders to find their special-teams answer.
“You don’t get those plays all the time, but to get a punt return and then an onside kick and then win it with a field goal when the time’s winding down is special,” said John Bapst coach Dan O’Connell. “You see grown men trying to execute that every Saturday and Sunday and don’t get it, and for these kids to execute that, I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
CRUSADERS 15, LYNX 14
Mattanawcook (7-3) 0 14 0 0 – 14
John Bapst (9-1) 6 0 0 9 – 15
JB – Wetherbee 58 pass from Gallant (kick failed)
MA – Hand 77 run (Coggins kick)
MA – Cahill 12 pass from Coggins (Coggins kick)
JB – D. Smith 55 punt return (rush failed)
JB – Gallant 31 field goal
Mattanawcook John Bapst
First downs 9 9
Rushing att.-yards 37-213 35-112
Passing comp.-att. 3-7 8-20
Passing yards 32 115
Total yards 245 227
Punts-avg. 4-29.3 3-31.3
Fumbles-lost 2-2 0-0
Intercepted by 3 0
Penalties-yards 6-54 6-40
Rushing
Mattanawcook: Hand 9-100, Vose 20-98, Smith 3-34, E. White 3-0, Coggins 2-(minus-19); John Bapst: Gallant 13-40, Wetherbee 4-38, N. Smith 17-29, Huckestein 1-5
Passing
Mattanawcook: Coggins 3-6-0-32, Pelkey 0-1-0-0; John Bapst: Gallant 8-20-3-115
Receiving
Mattanawcook: Cahill 1-12, T. White 1-12, Johnston 1-8; John Bapst: Healey 2-34, D. Smith 2-17, Moriarty 2-6, Wetherbee 1-58, N. Smith 1-0
A-700 (est.)
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