WINDHAM — All week long, Bill Raycraft had a message for his football team: Get ready for a fight.
The Jaguars rolled through an undefeated regular season, but when the Division 2 playoff pairings came out, Raycraft knew No. 1 ranked Windham had drawn a worthy adversary.
"Out of everybody we wanted to see, Bow was not one of them," Bill Raycraft said. "They are not your typical eight seed."
Bow certainly proved that yesterday, knocking off the top-seeded Jaguars, 20-15 in a smash-mouth quarterfinal thriller.
"Coming in as the eight seed, no one expected us to win," Bow coach Paul Cohen said. "I said to (my team), 'You've got nothing to lose. You're in the playoffs. A lot of you guys are veterans.' Some of these seniors have been playing in the playoffs for three years straight now."
One of Bow's seniors was clutch with game on the line.
Trailing 15-14, quarterback Matt Harkins got the ball at his own 48 yard line with 1:21 to play. The captain had been 1-of-12 passing prior to the drive, but he wasn't fazed. Harkins was brilliant on Bow's final drive.
He found Steven Guerrette for a big-gainer over the middle, picking up 32 yards on a post pattern, then calmly set his offense and spiked the ball with 45 seconds to play.
"I had good confidence," Harkins said. "We have a lot of All-State players, especially on the line, so I knew I had my protection. I just had to let the game come to me, read the defense and see who was open."
Getting deeper into Windham territory with 45 seconds on the clock, Cohen trusted his quarterback to make the right call.
The Falcons called a rollout, where Harkins' first read was to tuck it and run. When that wasn't there, the quarterback took a step back and fired a bullet into the end zone, hitting senior Mark Borak for the go-ahead, 23-yard touchdown with 37 seconds to play.
"That was exemplary, absolutely exemplary," Cohen said. "That's why he's a quad-captain. We saw leadership in him when he was a freshman, it's developed over the years, and that's exactly what I was looking for. That kind of leadership and perseverance late in the game when literally your season and your career is on the line."
When a last-ditch Windham Hail Mary fell to the turf, Bow had pulled off the upset.
There was a lengthy feeling-out process to open the game, with both teams trading three punts before Bow running back Jack Corriveau broke a 77-yard touchdown run late in the second quarter.
Corriveau and Ben Kimball were a two-headed monster in the Falcons backfield, combining for 208 yards on 35 carries. Aside from Corriveau's one touchdown run, none of those yards came easily. Heavy running between the tackles allowed Bow to dictate the tempo.
"You need to physically outplay the competition," Cohen told his team. "While they did take advantage of some of the things we goofed up here and there, I think we hit them harder than anybody else hit them this year. And I think that showed."
Running back Cody Stevens came out flying in the second half, sparking the Jaguars on a touchdown drive that was punctuated by a 2-yard Tommy Emrick score. Bow answered quickly, as Harkins hit Kimball for a 41 yard touchdown pass to retake a 14-7 lead. It was his lone completion before the final drive.
When Windham got the ball back late in the third quarter, it put another nice drive together, and Jake Aleksa ran one in from 32 yards out. Bow was whistled for a chop block on the touchdown, and rather than kicking an extra point, Windham elected to go for the shortened two-point conversion attempt.
Stevens took a handoff right up the middle, and as center Robert Tringale got an excellent surge, Windham took a one-point lead with 47 seconds to play in the third.
"It's just a matter of, I thought we could make some stops in the end and squeak out of this with a 15-14 win," Raycraft said.
Although his team didn't, Raycraft had no qualms with the loss. Eighth-seeded Bow just brought it.
"It's hard to be disappointed," said Raycraft, whose undefeated Jags were upset in the semis by Plymouth last fall. "If it was a team with not as much talent that caught us sleeping then yeah, you second-guess quite a bit. But I would not be shocked if they're back in Durham in two weeks."
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Amira Eid and Allyson Muller won at first and second singles to lead Pelham, which fell to to Bow, 6-3, in the Division 3 semifinals.
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EXETER — To say that Windham and Bow have gotten to know each other well over the past couple years would be quite the understatement.
Wednesday night, the two met again in a rematch of last year’s Division 2 championship game.
Except this time, the matchup came a round earlier, and ended with a different result.
Bow got a hard-fought goal in the second period, and blanked Windham at the Rinks at Exeter. The No. 2 Falcons added an empty-netter late in the third period to clinch the 2-0 victory in the Division 2 semifinals, denying the Jaguars a chance to defend their title.
The two teams skated to a 0-0 tie after the first period, but Bow’s Christopher Mead finally pushed one in through traffic during a scrum in front of the Windham net. The opportunistic Mead converted after two previous shots in front of the net were turned away by Jaguar goalie Max Daly.
“Daly made about three or fours saves to try to get that one, but somebody else has to pick (Mead) up,” said Windham coach Shawn Dunn. “But blown coverages happen. It really only happened once this entire game, and it ended up in the back of our net.
“It was as even a game as you could get. We played these guys twice earlier in the year and it was a 2-1 loss and a 0-0 tie. It’s just two evenly matched teams and somebody had to win. We were just on the wrong end of it.”
No. 3 Windham (13-6-1) did get some quality shots on net, including a blast from Nolan Cunningham in the first period that ricocheted off the left post.
But the Jaguars were either turned away by Bow goalie Nathan Carrier (15 saves), or stifled by the Falcons defensemen.
“There are obviously small things you could do to get yourself more scoring opportunities, but Bow is a well coached team,” said Dunn. “They adjusted every period and came out with a different look. So it’s just good coaching.”
Windham was out-shot 26-15, highlighting the stellar play of the junior Daly. He made 24 saves total, turning away half of those shots in a brilliant third period.
Daly lunged to make a great kick save in the first period, and then turned away Mead on a breakaway opportunity midway through the third to keep the Jaguars in it. His performance earned him high praise from his coach.
“He’s been huge for us all year. I can’t say enough about him,” said Dunn. “He keeps us in game. We have a really young defense, so he helps to hide their mistakes. We just couldn’t get that one goal tonight for him.”
Windham is losing key seniors in Owen McNamara, Tim Anderson, Brandan Madigan, Danny Donovan and Christian Bassi. But the Jaguars should be returning the majority of their roster next season.
Bow will play No. 1 Keene in Saturday’s championship game at Southern New Hampshire at 2:30 p.m.
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Erik Olson singled in Keith Brown in the bottom of the seventh to send Pelham into extra innings, and was hit by a pitch with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the tenth to win the game. Anthony Campbell had a two out, RBI double in the bottom of the ninth after Bow scored a run in the top half to keep the game going. Brown also lauched a three-run homerun in the third.
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Pinkerton's gymnastics team improved to 15-0 with easy wins over Exeter, Pelham and Spaulding. Juliana Corsetto was second in the all-around for the Astros. Pelham's Sara Fisher was first in both the vault and beam.
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Keith Brown did it again for Pelham on Tuesday, hitting seven 3-pointers en route to a 35 point performance in the team's 71-43 win over Bow.
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