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The Newbury Black Knights faced a very large order on Homecoming night when they hosted a powerful Windham Bombers team.
The game had Division 7 playoff implications for both teams, as the Bombers were in the playoffs at the No. 6 spot, while Newbury sat just outside of the top eight teams at No. 9.
Newbury gave it their all, but battling a larger school at Carl Munn Stadium, as the fog rolled in midway through the second quarter, Windham used the cover to its advantage with three touchdowns before half in the 54-22 win.
“Windham didn’t do anything we didn’t expect them to do,” Newbury coach Ryan Williams said. “They are a big, fast team that just does everything well. We had them in a close game for much of the first half. We wanted to try to milk the clock with ball control if we could, but they are so big and fast that, while we had some success, we couldn’t sustain it like we wanted to. Then, just before halftime, we started doing some things that I had never seen us do before, silly things that didn’t work our way.”
The size difference was apparent as the teams warmed up, but Newbury gained a first down on the first play of the game, as 12-yard run by Johnny Chambers, and it looked like the Black Knights would not be denied.
On 4th down, however, from the Windham 38-yard line, Chambers drew a large crowd of defenders at the line of scrimmage, falling short of the first down. On the first play from scrimmage, Blaze Angle found Tyler Collins over the middle with a pass, Collins eluded several tacklers and was off to the races for a quick score.
Noah Parsons took the ensuing kickoff and dashed down the left sideline for 60 yards to set up the Black Knights at the Bomber 17-yard line, and Chambers took the ball in from the seven to tie the score at 8-8.
Phil Maiorca’s 74-yard run 32 seconds later untied it, and a 27-yard punt return from Maiorca set up at 65-yard drive in eight plays that gave Windham a 20-8 lead after the first quarter.
Being in serious playoff contention, Newbury was not about to back down, though.
In a drive that was keyed by a 13-yard run on a short snap from center by Dylan Hamilton that went for a first down from punt formation, Chambers rolled right and found Tino Johnson crossing over the middle to the left, and Johnson snared the pass and outran everybody to the end zone for a 53 yard score, cutting the lead to 20-15 with 8:54 left before halftime.
But things changed quickly for Newbury, and a series of Windham strikes, and tough bounces, ended Newbury’s chances.
After forcing the only Windham punt of the night on their next possession, Newbury took over on their own 32. On the fourth play thereafter, Chambers overthrew a pass along the left sideline, Eric Park picked it off, and Maiorca capped a four play drive from the 25 yard line to open a 28-15 edge.
Newbury lost a fumble at the Windham 12 yard line with 2:34 left to play. Nine plays later, Mason Angle scored his second touchdown from the 15, and then the really odd stuff started to happen.
Kicking off to open territory, the ball found nothing but moist, green turf, Windham captured the ball cleanly at the Newbury 9 yard line, and after a holding penalty moved the ball to the 22, Blaze Angle found Park for the score.
Whether planned or not, the Bombers again kicked off to the open spot of the Newbury return team. After several weird bounces, the ball eluded Anthony Harley at the Newbury 31, where Hunter Shackleford took the ball just inside the sideline stripe as it rested on Harley’s foot, and with 11 seconds left before the half, Angle found Park from the 15 for a very sudden 47-15 lead at the break.
“I’m not really sure what our focus was on with those onside kickoffs,” Williams said. “We practice things like that all the time, but the ball took some funny bounces and we couldn’t grab it, they did, and that was that. We showed we could do some good things against them, but we made some mistakes and had turnovers that really came fast, and couldn’t come back.”
He continued as Newbury looks ahead to its final two games of the season: “In spite of that, there are still some positives for us. Both the seventh (Warren JFK) and eighth (Toronto) rated teams ahead of us lost tonight, so we still have a chance to make it, if we win both of our games against PV and Mathews.”
Windham gained 531 yards for the game with 21 first downs, while the Black Knights had a decent game with 274 yards and 8 first downs, but eight penalties for 72 yards hurt, as did the four turnovers.
Maiorca, as he has all season, had a big game for the Bombers with 145 yards on 12 carries, Mason Angle chipped in with 114 yards and trio of scores as well.
Chambers , with several white jerseys escorting him everywhere but to the midfield stripe at halftime as he was crowned Homecoming King, never gave up, breaking several tackles with 1:19 to play on his way to an 83 yard evening, leading to a total of 111 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries.
The Black Knights fall to 4-4 on the season with the loss. With games this week at Pymatuning Valley and then at Mathews, both very winnable, the Black Knights are still very much alive in the hunt for the school’s first playoff appearance ever. Better tackling, a problem in this game, must fix itself, though, along with eliminating the other miscues, for it all to come together.
Not at all impossible, but the Newbury team must keep its head up with a look to success.
While a good night for Chambers as Homecoming King and Liesel Fenstermaker as Homecoming Queen, when the fog rolled in weird stuff happened to spoil the Newbury football team’s night.
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