Bishop Guertin football pulls away from Dover for win

NASHUA – One moment, the Dover High School football team seemed to have all the momentum on its side.

The Green Wave surprised Bishop Guertin with a successful fake extra point to take a one-point lead midway through the second quarter.

But it’s hard to keep momentum when you don’t have possession.

Bishop Guertin answered that score by keeping the ball for the rest of the half, thanks in part to an onside kick, and scored twice before halftime on the way to a 37-15 win over Dover in Division I action.

The Cardinals scored two touchdowns in the final 3:54 of the first, then after a defensive stop to open the third quarter, got a 26-yard field goal from Tyler Christiansen to turn a 15-14 deficit into a 31-15 lead.

Sam Raitt led the way for Bishop Guertin (4-1), completing 11 of 13 passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns, while also rushing 22 times for 114 yards and a score. Tyler Faulkner added 91 yards rushing and a touchdown on 19 carries, giving the Cardinals another option in the backfield to take some pressure off Raitt.

“You can kind of just take the quarterback away,” Bishop Guertin coach Jeff Moore said. “Now with the option game, the read game, you have to account for both guys rather than just say let’s take away the quarterback and make the back beat us. It’s a nice change up, especially with the speed, too, because he can get in a crease and go. He played well last week even though we didn’t play well.”

Sarveen Shafian-Rad (three catches, 44 yards), Dylan Fagan (four, 76) and John Begley (two, 25) each caught a touchdown pass from Raitt.

Dover (3-2) got rushing touchdowns from Vinny Panetta and Carson Webb, but after gaining 124 yards in the first half, the Green Wave struggled on offense in the second half and didn’t help itself by getting flagged for 11 penalties for 110 yards.

“We basically came out here and didn’t show up,” Dover Ken Osbon said. “We should have had four or five others plays that we didn’t make before the 15 points we put up. You can’t continue to make the mistakes that we made, the penalties, the missed assignments. We’ve been living off luck for the last three weeks, and (Saturday), luck ran out. We just didn’t show up.”

Bishop Guertin opened the game with a six-play, 70-yard drive that ended with Raitt’s 29-yard touchdown pass to Shafian-Rad to make it 7-0.

The Cardinals’ defense stopped Dover on its first two drives, but on Bishop Guertin’s third series, Michael Allanach came in at quarterback and was picked off by John Cantwell on the first play. The Green Wave cashed in five plays later on Panetta’s 8-yard touchdown run.

With the score still tied early in the second quarter, Raitt returned to lead a nine-play, 93-yard touchdown drive that was capped by the junior’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Fagan. Dover answered right back, needing just three plays to 61 yards and find the end zone on a 9-yard run by Webb, and on the extra point, the Dover quarterback picked up the ball, scrambled away from the rush and found Erik Stephens for the two points.

But Bishop Guertin responded with a quick scoring drive of its own, set up by a 40-yard kickoff return by Austin Hiscoe. Three plays later, Raitt scored from 33 yards out to make it 21-15 with 3:54 left in the half, and the Cardinals successfully recovered an onside kick at the Dover 43 to keep possession.

“We felt like after the first kick, we could get it if we executed,” Moore said. “We had our best two players over there and they had a tackle. In all that space, we felt we could kick it over there and then just outrun them for the ball. It worked out.”

The Cardinals held the ball for the rest of the half, thanks to a roughing the kicker penalty on a fourth-and-12 play near midfield. Faulkner’s 1-yard run as time expired in the half made it 28-15 going into the break.

“I thought BG was going to be a tough team we had to battle,” Osbon said. “They have a lot of athletes who run around and stuff. It’s disappointing because I think we’re a better football than that.”