NEW ORLEANS — In all the football I’ve ever seen before, this was a first.
Two balls were marked, precisely side by side, in the aftermath of a fourth-and-less-than-1 conversion try by St. Charles Catholic, nursing a two-point edge Saturday evening with 50 seconds left in its Division III Select state championship game against Calvary.
One belonged to the Comets, for use by their offense to run out the rest of the clock if a TV replay review changed the ruling on the field. The other, a Cavaliers’ ball, sat ready in case the measurement stood the test of video, and Calvary was getting a final shot to win.
The balls lay bunched together at the Calvary 49, where officials spotted the end of a dive by SCC quarterback Brady St. Pierre, on a broken play, after a timeout. Thousands in the Caesars Superdome waited, and waited, and waited for the referee to finish his conversation over a headset with a replay judge way upstairs in the sky-high press box, about 200 feet above the field.
Announcement of the decision sounded muffled on the sideline, but when the referee pointed downfield toward to the St. Charles end zone, fists punched the air and there were leaps of joy and hope on the Calvary sideline. The Comets’ ball was tossed out of play, and with it, their hopes faded fast.
It was if the field suddenly tilted slightly downhill. The Cavs still had 51 yards to cover, and only 44 seconds to do it, without any timeouts. If the scenario was 180 degrees different, and SCC needed a last-minute score to win, it was unlikely.
With Calvary’s supercharged offense, it was almost expected.
“I knew if we had the opportunity, the O-line blocked, which they did perfectly, and the receivers got open, we were going to score,” said junior quarterback Abram Wardell. “And that’s what happened.”
There was deserved praise for running back James Simon, voted by media as the Cavs’ Most Outstanding Player for 191 yards rushing on a career-high 30 carries, including three touchdowns. His last play was subtle but vital. Simon picked up a backside rusher streaking toward Wardell and blocked away the Comets’ defender, combining with the offensive front to provide a clean pocket for the game-winning 20-yard TD strike to Kolby Thomas. That duo started the drive with a 19-yard connection. They finished it, and after another collaboration on a two-point conversion play, Calvary’s comeback was complete, 34-28.
That evaporated what could have been controversy on a surprising two-point attempt by St. Charles 16 seconds before halftime. A Comets’ TD pushed them ahead 20-13, but instead of shifting out of their standard swinging gate PAT formation and kicking the extra point, they ran a flanker screen that Calvary smothered. A penalty flag flew at the outset of the play, officials huddled, and announced the try would be replayed, after an infraction for an illegal formation.
That was wrong. Three veteran officials observers on the field confirmed the mistake at halftime. An illegal formation infraction doesn’t immediately stop play. Pre-snap illegal motion can. But that wasn’t the call. The referee’s announcement cited illegal formation, no one whistled the ball dead, and Calvary stopped the two-point try. A kickoff, not another PAT, was due.
Nobody in stripes gave Calvary coach Rodney Guin an explanation. Members of the chain gang told the officials observers they believed the penalty was for illegal motion, saying a side judge ran in signaling that infraction, but the referee announced it wrong and never corrected himself. So given a reprieve, St. Charles wisely reset, kicked the extra point, and went into halftime up 21-13.
That changed a lot of strategy. If It’s 20-13 at half, followed by a third-period SCC touchdown, Guin has Ty Knight kick the PAT after Simon’s 25-yard TD late in the quarter, closing the Cavs within 27-20. And when Aubrey Hermes and Wardell hooked up for a 20-yard score with 2:47 remaining, a Knight conversion kick would have tied the game at 27 – or maybe Guin might have gone for a go-ahead two-point try. Think the Comets could stop Simon in that scenario? It would have been a tempting choice.
But the scales of football justice eventually tilted Calvary’s way. The fourth-down measurement, and the replay review, opened the door for unforgettable last-minute heroics.
Down 15, the Cavs battled back, ultimately scoring TDs on three of their last four possessions, including two in the final three minutes that wiped away a 28-19 deficit. It was a shocking turnaround, defying the odds. That trendy “win probability” stat was slanted almost 100 percent to St. Charles until the closing seconds. But comets do burn out eventually.
As grownups, boys and girls in green and gold jumped and danced, shouted and laughed and hugged and re-hugged on the field moments after the game went final, more than a few were expressing their amazement, including some who may have been coaches. A couple of weeks earlier, on the Calvary sideline in the state quarterfinals, senior deep snapper Alex Wren had asked me during a timeout what I was writing, and we had a quick conversation. We met again early in Saturday’s celebration.
“I’m not gonna lie,” he volunteered, with a smile that seemed to stretch past ear to ear. “I thought we were beat, and I’ll be honest, I was over there crying, but then we made the plays it took. I was a state champion as a freshman in 2020, and now I’m a state champion as a senior in 2023. It’s amazing.”
Yes, Alex. It still is as Monday morning approaches, and always will be.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com