Mounties end losing streak
September 6, 2008
By Chuck Clarino Herald Staff
BURLINGTON — The win has been so long in coming that Mount St. Joseph almost didn’t know how to celebrate the 21-12 victory over Burlington Friday at Buck Hard Field.
Alex Raymond missed head coach Chip Forte with the customary water-bucket bath. But once the 24-man team drew a tight circle around their coach, the Mounties bounced up and down chanting and whooping in victory.
MSJ had lost 11 straight games and scored just four touchdowns during the entire 2007 season, but this is a dedicated band of Mounties. They may be small in size and short in numbers but they have heart plus a lean and hungry look that translated into the first win in Forte’s tenure as a coach and for many of these players, their first in an MSJ uniform.
Senior wide receiver Nolan Rhodes hauled in touchdown passes of 95 and 55 yards from junior quarterback Leighton Thayer, while junior running back Johnny Bizon bulled over the goal line from 3 yards out to fuel the Mounties’ win.
“We’ve lost 11 game in-a-row but we’ve worked our butts off the past two years,” said Rhodes, a captain. “Nobody gives us a chance, they think MSJ is a bunch of skinny kids with 15 people on the team, but we’re not. We work just as hard as anybody else and we deserve this because we’re as close a team as you can get.”
The Mounties came back from a 7-0 deficit and had to do it with a long field and a third-and-long from their own 5-yard-line. But Thayer found Rhodes running free down the Burlington sidelines with a perfect strike. Rhodes fought off a defender, gathered in the pass and outraced the secondary for the 95-yard scoring strike.
Lauri Vutanen’s PAT gave the Mounties their first lead in two seasons at 7-6.
But the biggest drive of the night was initiated with 6:13 remaining in the second period.
MSJ set up shop on its own 41 and began to march. Relying mostly on Bizon’s hard running behind a fired-up offensive line, MSJ put together a 14-play, 59-yard drive. Bizon beat the clock and blasted over from the 3 with five seconds left in the half.
During that crucial drive, Thayer hit Rhodes with a 10-yard pass on fourth-and-9 to keep the drive alive. On the march, Bizon toted the pigskin 10 times for 41 yards.
Burlington responded by taking the second half kickoff and driving.
With Lloyd Nunn hitting the holes hard and Grady Breen mixing in the pass, the Seahorses moved 61 yards on 11 plays, culminated by a Breen-to-Michael LaBombard 31-yard scoring strike. But the two-point conversion failed and MSJ led 14-12 with 8:34 remaining.
The Mounties offense was hamstrung when both Bizon and his running mate Ben Benedict came up lame with cramps in their legs. MSJ was hard pressed to get anything moving on the ground as Burlington stacked the box with players, trying to force the Mounties to put the ball in the air.
But MSJ stuck to its game plan and tried to grind it out and relyon its defense.
The defensive line, anchored by Ben Sexton and Louis Altobell, were tough, while undersized players like Matt Messier and Brian Ribbans came up big. Alex Raymond celebrated his birthday with a big game, while Finnish exchange students Hannes Mattik and Janne Siltanen also came up big. The secondary, which had players playing out of position, stayed tough with Rhodes, Eric Ladabouche, Thayer, Dylan Stone and Cameron Stiles pitching in.
The Mounties sacked Breen four times and in the second half, casuing the Seahorses to hand the ball over on downs twice, while holding Burlington to four first downs and 85 total yards.
“Our defensive line is the heart of this team and our secondary just needed to step up,” Rhodes said. “We knew that all we had to do was do our deal — we owed it to our defensive line. They played great last week. It was our secondary’s responsibility last week and we made up for it this week.”
Still, with the clock winding down, it was still anybody’s game.
MSJ got the ball with 3:59 remaining and good field position on its own 40.
On third-and-9, Thayer found Rhodes running down the Mounties sideline and threw it up where the tall, lean Rhodes could grab it and wrestle it away from the defensive back. He made the snatch and ran free for a 55-yard TD pass that sealed the win.
“Leighton Thayer is a young quarterback who’s got the talent and he finally just let it go, trusted in himself that he had what it takes to be a great quarterback,” Rhodes said. “It all starts with him and the offensive line being great pass blockers; all I had to do was catch the ball.”
The Mounties were able to rack up 235 yards, with 160 coming through the air. Burlington had 128 yards, split 63 overland and 65 in the air.
Burlington (0-2) scored its first touchdown on a 3-yard run by Andrew Cane after a short punt gave the Seahorses great field position. But Cane left the game with an injury in the first half and never returned, which hurt the Burlington cause.
MSJ (1-1) will now come home to host South Burlington and try for another celebration.
“This is the greatest feeling in the world,” said Forte, leaving the field with his first win. “It was a total effort, they all stepped up. This is something we can build on. I’m very proud of their effort to come back from adversity like that away from home.”
Contact Chuck Clarino at chuck.clarino@rutlandherald.com
