BURLINGTON — There are times in life when a confluence of events come together that just aren’t going to let you accomplish what you want.
Pouring rain on a cold Friday night, plays scrapped from their game script as a result of the weather, and a hungry, senior-driven Needham High football team were the main conspirators against the St. John’s Prep football team in its quest to return to the Division 1 state Super Bowl.
The unbeaten Rockets made sure that didn’t happen by playing smart and extremely hard-nosed football to take down the top ranked Eagles, 22-14, in the Division 1 semifinals at Victory Field.
“We knew we could play with whoever was coming our way,” said Needham star running back Aidan Williams, a 6-foot-3, 230-pounder who ran for 144 yards and a touchdown on 30 carries. He also caught two passes, threw a 38-yard halfback option pass, and make two big fourth down stops as a linebacker.
“It’s just this brotherhood that we’ve been building since we were in youth (football) that we knew late in games our senior year, we could tap into that extra gear.”
Brian St. Pierre, the St. John’s Prep head coach, made no excuses afterwards.
“That’s a very physical team, a very good team, almost all seniors. This was their year to do it, and now they’ve got a chance to do it,” he said of the victorious Rockets.
“I don’t fault our effort,” he added. “The execution wasn’t great, but the weather certainly played a role in some of the stuff we wanted to call and couldn’t. We struggled gripping the ball. But that’s not why we lost; we lost to a team that played better than us tonight.”
The Eagles, who stretch the field as well as any team in the Bay State when throwing the ball, completed just 6-of-22 passes for a combined 65 yards. While senior Jeff Quigley (71 yards, 2 TDs) and sophomore Jordan Toribio (97 yards) were able to grind out yardage on the ground, the mix-and-match of both disciplines working in tandem wasn’t there.
A big reason why was the constant pressure that Needham brought defensively, either in blitz packages, sealing off the edges or breaking up passes. The Rockets had three pass interference calls whistled against them, but it didn’t deter their aggressiveness.
When the Rockets had the ball, they turned to Williams and let the big back do his thing.
“Senior offensive line, senior defensive line, senior who’s a big, pile-moving back,” St. Pierre said in describing Needham. “We couldn’t get the stops when we absolutely needed to have a stop, and we couldn’t punch it in when we absolutely needed to punch it in.”
St. John’s Prep trailed at halftime, 22-7, but seemed to get a spark when senior captain Deacon Robillard replaced highly touted freshman Chris Vargas under center late in the third quarter. Robillard moved the Eagles 70 yards in nine plays, hitting fellow captain Merrick Barlow down the left sideline for 38 yards on 3rd-and-28. Two plays later Quigley took an inside handoff, cut to his right and scored from 10 yards out, and Langdon Laws kicked the extra point that made it 22-14.
Needham followed by going 3-and-out and punting the ball back to the Eagles with 7:25 to go. Again St. John’s Prep marched downfield, with Toribio ripping off a 49-yard run out of a Wildcat formation on 4th-and-3 from his own 42. They reached the Rockets’ 4-yard line before Ben Schreiber intercepted a pass on the goal line.
Williams then got a pair of first down runs to run out the clock and give Needham — which had lost in last year’s Division 1 semifinals — its biggest win in years.
“We knew their tendencies,” Williams, who was congratulated by St. Pierre afterwards (“You’re a heck of a player,” said the coach), said. “We knew they wanted to run the ball a lot behind those great offensive linemen, they have two great quarterbacks and that No. 5 (Barlow), the receiver. So we tried to key on those matchups. It was about being consistent, and except for a few big plays we did a lot of bend but not break.”
Joe Kajunski picked up a Williams fumble and ran it in from 12 yards out to give Needham a 6-0 lead late in the first quarter; the Eagles responded with a 14-play, 80-yard drive that ate 8 minutes and 12 seconds off the clock. Quigley took an awkward-looking handoff in the backfield, escaped a tackle, lowered his head and plowed forward from 13 yards out into the end zone.
The Rockets responded just three plays later when Williams found a hole on the left side and galloped 41 yards to paydirt for a 14-7 lead. Quarterback Griffin Carr added a 6-yard scoring run off a scramble less than two minutes before halftime, the drive set up after his team blocked a St. John’s Prep punt.
“They’re worthy of winning. Our kids fought hard, but it just wasn’t enough tonight,” said Pierre.
He lauded the play of senior tight end Will Kent, who stepped in at left tackle due to an illness by starter Jack DiFilippo and performed admirably. “That’s the kind of team we are,” said St. Pierre, “with an unselfish senior who filled a huge void and held us own.”
St. John’s Prep will now conclude its season at home Thanksgiving morning when it hosts long time rival Xaverian at Glatz Field (10:15 a.m.).
“These kids are gutted right now, I’m gutted, the staff’s gutted. But we’ll rally; we always do,” said St. Pierre. “I always expect us to play spirited on Thanksgiving. The way I phrased it to the kids was that we have one more week to be together with this group, so let’s cherish that and work as hard as we can to put out a good product on Thanksgiving.”
Needham 22, St. John’s Prep 14
Division 1 state semifinal
at Burlington High
Needham (11-0);0;6;16;0;22
St. John’s Prep (9-2);0;7;0;7;14
Scoring summary
N — Joe Kajunski 12 run off fumble recovery (pass failed)
SJP — Jeff Quigley 13 run (Langdon Laws kick)
N — Aidan Williams 41 run (Andrew Concannon pass from Brandt Bickford)
N — Griffin Carr 6 run (Bickford pass from Carr)
SJP — Quigley 10 run (Laws kick)
Individual Statistics
RUSHING: Needham — Aidan Williams 30-144, Joe Kajunski 1-12, Stephen Rocamboli 5-10, Griffin Carr 2-3; St. John’s Prep — Jordan Toribio 12-97, Jeff Quigley 18-71, Chris Vargas 1-3.
PASSING: Needham — Carr 2-2-(-1)-0-0, Williams 1-1-38-0-0; St. John’s Prep — Vargas 4-17-22-0-0, Deacon Robillard 2-5-43-0-1.
RECEIVING: Needham — Kajunski 1-38, Williams 2-(-1); St. John’s Prep — Merrick Barlow 1-38, Pierson Scala 2-11, Andrew McManmon 1-10, Toribio 1-5, Josh Haarmann 1-1.