In the Hollywood version of the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake 2009 football story, the Spartans go to Syracuse’s Carrier Dome and, against the same team that denied them a year before, win the state Class A championship to give head coach Matt Shell and his ailing son the best possible present.
Painful reality intervened Saturday night, though, in the form of the Sweet Home Panthers who, with plenty of their own motivation to draw from, made some history.
Sweet Home used big pass plays in the first half to sprint out in front, and the short-handed BH-BL Spartans could not turn it around in a 34-7 defeat last Saturday.
It wasn’t for lack of effort on our part,` Shell said. `We just didn’t make enough plays. And they [Sweet Home] are a high-class team. They’re really good.`
Running back Brandon Beatty, who scored BH-BL’s lone touchdown early in the third quarter, said the Panthers’ size advantage at nearly every position took a toll on the Spartans.
`We’ve got strong guys,` Beatty said. `But they [Sweet Home] were both big and strong.`
Nothing, at first, seemed stronger than the Spartans’ desire to bring home a state title, for reasons that went way beyond on-field pride in the ultimate team accomplishment.
Jacob Shell, the coach’s 8-year-old son, is undergoing cancer treatment in a Boston hospital. Despite the illness, he has followed his father’s team through Internet streams of the BH-BL games, and Matt has spent large amounts of time with his son in Boston during the week as assistant coaches ran the practices.
Inspired by this family battle, the entire Burnt Hills community seemed to follow the team to the Carrier Dome. All the players and coaches wore orange wristbands with the initials `JS` in black marker, and the massive contingent in maroon far outnumbered the Sweet Home crowd.
Still, the Panthers (13-0) ` a Section VI school hailing from the Buffalo suburb of Amherst ` had their own source of inspiration. Deshanaro Morris, a star on the 2008 state title team, was paralyzed in a car accident not long after Sweet Home beat BH-BL 35-28 a season ago.
In a wheelchair, Morris led his team onto the field, participated in the coin toss and cheered his team from the sidelines as another championship got decided.
Twice in the first quarter of this rematch, the Spartans (12-1) drove into Sweet Home territory. Both times, the Panthers’ defense made key stops, and those missed opportunities would come back to haunt BH-BL in a hurry.
Late in the first quarter, Sweet Home quarterback Patrick McMahon threw deep and found a wide-open Nick Cuviello on a 47-yard pass. This led to fullback Ralph Neasman scoring on a 1-yard plunge early in the second period, and the Panthers led 7-0.
BH-BL appeared to be turning things around when it pinned Sweet Home on its nine-yard line midway through the period. But on third-and-11, McMahon pump-faked, drew in the defense and threw deep to Jahaan Williams in full stride at the 40-yard line. Williams did the rest on a 91-yard touchdown play to make the score 13-0.
Another key sequence came late in the first half. Facing fourth-down-and-inches on its own 41-yard line, BH-BL went for it, and Beatty was stopped short of the first down. Just 49 seconds later, McMahon threw a swing pass to D.J. Nettles, who eluded one tackle and outran the BH-BL defenders to the end zone to give Sweet Home a 19-0 lead.
McMahon completed six of eight pass attempts for 220 yards in the first half.
`You can’t give up big plays,` Shell said. `At any level of football, two or three big plays make a difference.`
The news got worse for the Spartans when they found out at halftime that quarterback Phil Neumann had broken his collarbone on a running play. But they still found a way to get back in the game. After stopping Sweet Home on fourth down at their 37-yard line, Beatty took a handoff on the next play and was never touched on a 63-yard gallop to the other end zone.
Evan Nusbaum intercepted McMahon on the Panthers’ ensuing possession, and one more scoring drive might have made things quite interesting for BH-BL. Instead, the Panthers stepped up their own defense and forced two turnovers in the third quarter ` both of them interceptions by Nettles, who was named the game’s Most Valuable Player.
Nettles also made a crucial fourth-down catch to set up Neasman’s second 1-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter. Neasman scored again with 3:57 to play as Sweet Home clinched a second consecutive state title.
Yet both sides, because of what they had gone through off the field, seemed to understand the proper place of football – even one as important as a state championship game. Before the game, Sweet Home players had gathered to send a get-well card to Jacob Shell, and several BH-BL players presented Morris with a maroon `Shellstrong` T-shirt, which he held during the post-game handshake.“