Exeter football beats Winnacunnet on last-second field goal (video)

EXETER – The Exeter High School football team sure knows how to keep things exciting.

For the third week in a row, the Blue Hawks found a way to win on the final possession, this time on a 25-yard field goal by Evan Royar with 5.9 seconds remaining, to beat Winnacunnet 21-20.

After a big fourth-down stop, Exeter got the ball on its own 24-yard line with 5:22 remaining, and coach Bill Ball felt confident that the Blue Hawks, despite struggling at times to move the ball consistently, were in pretty good shape.

“I thought we could move it,” Ball said. “I thought our legs were getting stronger. Jackson Allen was hitting it pretty good off-tackle. Kyle (Ball) was hitting up there on the follow-me a little bit. It was a good drive, I was just worried about time. We showed a lot of resiliency and didn’t flinch at the end.”

Allen finished the game with 82 yards rushing and two touchdowns and quarterback Kyle Ball had 77 yards on the ground to go with a score, as Exeter (4-0) piled up 254 yards rushing (318 total). But half of that yardage came on the Blue Hawks’ first and last drives of the game.

Winnacunnet’s inability to stop that last drive, though, was what stuck with coach Ron Auffant after the game.

“Bottom line, we just weren’t good enough up front,” he said. “I think what it really came down to was that when we had to stop the run, I don’t think we could and I was disappointed in that.”

The Warriors (2-2) were able to move the ball themselves, putting up 354 yards of offense, including 233 on the ground. Brian Auffant led the way with 116 yards and a touchdown on 19 carriers, while Mike Lewis had 112 yards and a score on 18 touches. Quarterback Patrick MacDougall was also 8 of 15 for 121 yards with a touchdown and an interception that loomed large after the game.

With the first half coming to an end, Winnacunnet held a 14-12 and was on the verge of more, driving down to the Exeter 13-yard line. But on second-and-10, MacDougall’s pass to Joseph Stevenson was intercepted by Cameron Flanagan in the end zone.

“I think one of the biggest plays, to me, was Flanagan’s interception at the end of the half,” Ball said. “In retrospect, that was a huge play. It was great.”

That play, along with the decision to go for it on fourth down from the Exeter 24 in the fourth quarter, were decisions that Auffant said he would try not to second guess.

“We can’t second guess anything because we’d never sleep,” he said. “We had our chances (Saturday). The game could have gone either way. The kids played hard. We had a chance down there to get a first down and we had a nice play that we liked.”

Exeter opened the scoring by taking the kickoff and going 78 yards on 12 plays, getting in the end zone on Allen’s 1-yard run with 6:31 left in the first. Winnacunnet needed just three plays to answer, when Brian Auffant, on third-and-3, found a hole and raced down the right side for a 52-yard score and a 7-6 lead for the Warriors.

Winnacunnet made it 14-6 when MacDougall found Logan Keene for a 7-yard touchdown to end an 11-play, 55-yard drive with 6:42 remaining in the half. Exeter answered that score with one of its own, as Ball ran in from 9 yards out, but the conversion failed and it was 14-12 Warriors.

That’s where it stayed until late in the third, when Lewis found room to run on the left side of the Exeter defense and went 44 yards for a touchdown to make it 20-12 with 3:31 left in the quarter. But again, the Blue Hawks answered, going 75 yards in eight plays and scoring on a 25-yard run by Allen as the third ended, making it 20-18.

Then, on the final drive, Exeter converted a fourth-and-1 at the Winnacunnet 22 before Ball hit Flanagan for a 9-yard gain to the 12. The Blue Hawks used their final timeout there, with 46.9 seconds left, and got a first down on Ball’s 5-yard run.

After spiking the ball to stop the clock with 39 seconds to go, Ball picked up four more yards to the 3. With the clock running, Exeter was called for an illegal substitution, and faced a third-and-goal from the 7.

The Blue Hawks scrambled to line up for the kick as the clock continued to run, and just as they were set, Winnacunnet called a timeout with 9.7 seconds to go. The teams then lined up again, and again, before Exeter could snap the ball, the Warriors called time.

“We wanted to freeze them,” Ron Auffant said. “In hindsight, maybe we could have made them kick it then. We just wanted to make them think about it. We knew they’d have time. We had our timeouts, we figured what the heck.”

Royar’s kick went through with 5.9 seconds remaining, and after Winnacunnet tried to advance the kickoff, had 1.3 seconds left to work with. But MacDougall’s deep ball was broken up and the Exeter players rushed the field to celebrate.

“I’m proud of my guys of finishing the game,” Bill Ball said. “This one is such a big one. A lot of respect for them and a lot of them are tough kids.”