LACONIA, N.H. — The Newport-Mount Royal football team’s first half wasn’t pretty but its afternoon ended perfectly, as the Tigers stayed calm and rolled to a 20-0 win over Newfound on Saturday at Laconia High School, clinching an unbeaten season and the NHIAA Division IV state title.
One might think there would be panic entering the halftime break in a scoreless tie after a first half spotted by three lost fumbles, two on drives inside the red zone. Not these Tigers.
In its pursuit of perfection, No. 1-seeded Newport-Mount Royal (10-0 overall, 9-0 NHIAA) stayed laser-focused. Behind a stingy defense and three second-half rushing touchdowns from senior Ayden Hodge, senior Josh Seymour and sophomore Joe Gosselin, the Tigers earned the right to be called champions.
“The conversation at halftime was that we owned that first half; we just made some mistakes,” said Kevin Pollari, a former Newport player and former assistant coach who just wrapped up his first season as the Tigers’ head coach.
“We didn’t have to do anything new. We didn’t have to do too many major adjustments. We just had to go back to where we were — to where we should have been to start the game.”
Newport football coaching legend Larry Carle, an assistant for this year’s squad and now an NHIAA Hall of Famer, credited Pollari and the players for their second-half turnaround.
“Because they were so calm, it’s none of this rah-rah-rah, yell and scream, get crazy and get bent out of shape at halftime,” Carle said. “It’s a reflection of the coach and also the kids, the young men, with which he was involved.
“We need to do such and such to be ourselves, and they responded appropriately without all sorts of nonsense going on and being overemotional, out of control.”
The Tigers keeping their cool became a theme from the first drive of the game.
No. 2-seeded Newfound (7-2 overall and NHIAA) pulled out some trickery on its first offensive play, a halfback option pass from senior Abraham Furtado to junior Damien Sherkanowski for a 58-yard gain to the Tigers’ 12-yard line. But Newport-Mount Royal answered with a red-zone stand, took the football back and went on a 76-yard drive to the Bears’ 3-yard line.
Unfortunately for the Tigers, mistakes started to rear their ugly heads. The Tigers were called for back-to-back false starts and, after a Seymour rush lost a yard, Hodge fumbled on the next play.
Newfound did little with the turnover, reaching its 33-yard line before punting. Newport-Mount Royal senior Cory Richardson and Isaiah Nash forced the kick with sacks on second and third down.
With the ball back, the Tigers marched deep into Newfound territory again. But another fumble on a botched exchange between sophomore quarterback Jaxson Lord and Hodge at the 18-yard line killed any chance of points.
Fortunately for the Newport-Mount Royal offense, its defense kept responding.
Junior Wesley Wheeler got his first interception of the afternoon off Newfound senior quarterback Lucas Reynolds four plays after the Tigers’ lost fumble. Again the Tigers couldn’t convert: A fumbled snap two plays later gave the ball back to the Bears, who drove to the Newport-Mount Royal 43-yard line before the half expired.
The game started to turn the Tigers’ way out of the halftime break.
Hodge’s 28-yard return on the second-half’s opening kickoff gave the Tigers prime field position at their own 47-yard line. Newport-Mount Royal marched 53 yards in eight plays, capped off by a 10-yard touchdown run from Hodge for the contest’s first score. Gosselin punched in the two-point conversion to put the Tigers up 8-0 four minutes into the third quarter.
Hodge pointed to the kickoff return as the turning point and credited the offensive line for its play out of half.
“The front guys — I put a lot of trust in them — with my life,” he said. “We put in a lot of preseason work with our QBs, our wide receivers, me, and a lot of the big guys go lift after practice and everything. And a lot of us have been playing since pee wee together, so we trust each other a lot.”
While the Tigers started putting it together in the game’s final 24 minutes, the Bears’ offensive woes continued.
Reynolds was picked off again on the third play of Newfound’s ensuing drive, this time by Tiger sophomore Jakob Fernald. While the Tigers couldn’t capitalize on the interception, they eventually extended their lead in the fourth quarter.
After a Bears’ punt, Newport-Mount Royal got the ball back with 10:30 left and scored in less than two minutes on a four-play, 44-yard drive, capped by a 9-yard rush from Seymour to make it 14-0 Tigers after a failed two-point conversion.
In dire need of a score, Newfound’s offense was stifled. On the third play of the Bears’ next possession, Hodge sacked Reynolds to force a fourth-and-long, where he deflected a pass to get his offense the ball back.
Gosselin took the football 17 yards to the house on the next play from scrimmage, effectively putting the game on ice as the Tigers held a 20-0 advantage with 6:02 remaining. Wheeler got his second interception a minute later, allowing the Tigers to run out the clock and officially secure a state title.
“It was a lot of work,” Pollari said of going unbeaten en route to a title. “It’s all about the kids — it’s all them. … We can game plan and do whatever we want as coaches, but it’s really the kids that are on the field that are performing.”
