Big Plays Lift Lee Down Stretch Against Wahconah
LEE, Mass. – With 3 minutes, 24 seconds left in Friday’s showdown with Wahconah, Lee football senior Kodie Mendoza made the play of the game.
Then, two minutes later, he made the other play of the game for good measure.
Together, those two moments sealed an 18-14 win and a 2-0 start to the season for the Wildcats.
A back-and-forth game was back in Lee’s favor after Jaydee Reber scored on a 5-yard plunge early in the fourth quarter to give his team a four-point margin.
And on Wahconah’s next possession, a Lee interception got the ball back for the Wildcats at their 37 with about six minutes left.
But Wahconah’s defense forced a three-and-out, and Mendoza dropped back in punt formation. He delivered a 54-yard boot that settled at the Wahconah 5 with 3:24 on the clock.
Understandably, the Lee sideline erupted.
“We were in the same spot [against Wahconah] last year,” Lee coach Tom Salinetti said. “It was in the first quarter, and he had a great punt to pin them deep. And his punt here in the fourth quarter may have been the play of the game, honestly.
“It’s probably the most excited we got all night. We all knew he completely flipped the field for us. And just comes up in the biggest spots. He’s a guy who has just grinded and grinded and grinded to get where he’s at. And he shows up in these crazy big spots almost out of nowhere.”
Lee’s sideline and fans were further encouraged when Wahconah’s first two plays from deep in its end yielded 4 yards and when the Wildcats’ defense flushed QB Gio Venable out of the pocket on third down.
But Venable rolled to his left, bided his time and found Anthony Englyshe 51 yards down the field for a completion at the Lee 40 with 2:18 left on the clock.
Suddenly, it was the Wahconah sideline that had all the momentum. And a run by Jerry Beaubrun got the visitors to the 35.
But on the next play, Mendoza picked off a pass on the sideline to get Lee the ball at its 21 with a lead and 1:24 on the clock.
“I saw it. I went for it. I caught it,” Mendoza said of the interception.
Although Wahconah did get one more shot from midfield with 12 seconds left, the game was in Lee’s hands as much as the pick was in Mendoza’s.
The dramatic fourth quarter capped a night that saw the lead change hands four times.
Lee’s offensive line produced 85 yards rushing and a touchdown for Seamus Cooney, and David Kirchner completed four of eight passes for 34 yards and a TD.
Meanwhile, Wahconah’s Venable kept his team in the game with 189 yards of passing and both his team’s scores.
In the end, though, it was the Wildcats’ ability to bottle up Wahconah’s rushing game that may have tilted the balance.
“We didn’t do well up front,” Wahconah coach Gary Campbell Jr. said. “That hurt. We couldn’t be balanced at all. You could tell we had to rely totally on throwing and the sprint-out game and stuff, and that hurt.
“Our defense did a great job to keep us in it,. We’ve just got to get better up front.”
Lee, which shut out Wahconah a year ago in Dalton, got off to another solid start on Friday, marching 56 yards on an opening possession that ended in Cooney’s 2-yard TD run with 5:15 left in the first quarter.
And the Wildcat defense forced a three-and-out on Wahconah’s first possession to get the ball back.
But Wahconah’s defense held Lee scoreless on its next possession, and Campbell’s team caught a break when the snap got away from Mendoza on a punt from the Lee 39 late in the second quarter.
Wahconah recovered the ball at the 20, and two plays later Venable found Michah Roberts for a 23-yard touchdown pass. Venable then connected with Roberts again for the conversion to give their team an 8-6 lead with 2:12 left.
Lee recovered the ensuing kickoff at its 28 and went all the way for the score in 1:58.
Kirchner completed a pair of passes – an 11-yarder to Gabe Ranzoni and a 14-yard scoring strike to Mason Lucy in the end zone.
The Wildcats were helped by two penalties against Wahconah in the drive: a 15-yarder for unsportsmanlike conduct and a 10-yarder for defensive holding on a pass play, the latter setting up Lee at the plus-14 with 35 seconds left.
But Lee also was flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty of its own after the TD pass, pushing the ball back to the 18 and leading to the second of three failed two-point conversions in the game.
That made it 12-8, Wildcats, at half-time.
But Wahconah erased that deficit with a 60-yard drive to start the second half. Venable connected with Englyshe for a 21-yard score to make it 14-12 with 8:58 left in the third. This time, Lee stopped the conversion try, and Wahconah settled for a three-point lead.
After an exchange of punts, Lee got the ball at the plus-35 with 3:31 left in the quarter.
It took 12 plays and a couple of fourth-down conversions, but the Wildcats got in the end zone with 8:55 left in the game on Reber’s score to make it 18-14, setting the stage for two Lee interceptions wrapped around a titanic punt to get the game under a minute.
Wahconah’s last gasp came after a 10-yard Venable punt return got the ball to the minus-44 with 12 seconds and no Wahconah timeouts remaining. A hook and lateral to the right side yielded 12 yards and stopped the clock with three seconds. Venable’s final pass of the night was picked off by Cooney, allowing Lee to start the celebration in earnest.
“I thought [Wahconah’s] second level guys flew to the ball and made life difficult on us,” Lee’s Salinetti said. “But we’re not going to get away from our game. We just trusted that we would get through it. Trusted the defense is going to turn it around and make plays.
“Jaydee [Reber], Seamus [Cooney], Bryce [Hoff] and David putting his body out there. It was a gut check game, and just so much toughness – out of both sides.”
Campbell would agree with the last point.
“I am proud of my group,” he said. “Every time a little bit happened, we got up. We just kept getting up. We kept getting up making crazy plays – some simple plays and some ridiculous plays. But we kept making plays and kept getting up.
“If there’s anything football teaches, it’s that not everything’s going to go your way, and you have to get up every single time, no matter what happens. And our kids did. They answered. I couldn’t be more proud.”
Wahconah (1-1) closes its non-league schedule on Thursday at Northampton in the Route 9 Rumble.
Lee Friday is at Longmeadow.
Photos from this game to come.