Alvirne rebounds, gains playoff spot
HUDSON – All week, he avoided it like the plague – the football marked “Game Ball No. 9.”
“He wouldn’t go near it,” Alvirne High School football coach Bobby Nimblett said of his junior quarterback, Pat Reidy, who threw seven interceptions in his first varsity start last week against Bishop Guertin – the season’s ninth game.
But he’ll no doubt want to put Game Ball No. 10 on a nearby shelf. Reidy had the comeback week no one expected, completing nine of 10 passes for 109 yards and the game’s first touchdown – not to mention a rushing TD of his own – as the Broncos ripped Timberlane, 32-7 on Friday night. The win puts the Broncos (4-4 in Division II, 5-5 overall) in the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.
Alvirne, the fourth seed, will now face the winner of tonight’s Bishop Guertin-Exeter game in the Division II semifinals next weekend.
“We knew it was a hard game coming up,” said Reidy, who filled in again for usual starter Jon Baldwin, out with a concussion. “You’ve just got to get to the next game and we did. You can’t let it go.”
The “it” was the drive for the playoffs, which the Broncos completed despite going through a three-game losing streak at the worst possible time. Friday night they piled up 295 total yards (111 on the legs of running back Jesse Horne) and held the Owls, who also finished 4-4, to just 123 total yards.
It didn’t hurt Alvirne’s cause that Timberlane’s sensational running back, Derek Furey, was in street clothes, suffering from a sprained ankle and the effects of the flu.
“We felt good about the personnel we had,” Timberlane coach Kevin Fitzgerald said. “The personnel wasn’t the problem, it was just our lack of execution on both sides of the ball.”
Reidy’s hot half was bolstered by a 23-yard pass to Vincent Frasco in the flat, a catch-and-run play that produced the Broncos’ first score, capping an amazing 14-play, 76-yard drive. The PAT kick failed but Alvirne led 6-0 with 23 seconds left in the opening quarter. He started out completing his first seven passes for 91 yards, several on third down.
“The main thing for him was (last week) was his first start against a very good defense,” Nimblett said.
“He hadn’t gotten a lot of reps. This week he got all the reps. So going in he knew all the plays, we felt more comfortable, he threw the ball a lot better during the week, and he must have thrown the ball 100 times a day.”
The Owls then made life more difficult when back Nate Lawrence fumbled, caused by Derek Janko and recovered by the Broncos’ Ben Abucewicz at the Owl 22.
Four plays later Reidy snuck in from the 1 just over a minute into the second period. Jesse Horne’s conversion pass to Evan Anaya made it 14-0.
The Owls struck right back on Luke Ouellette’s 52 yard TD run, but Alvirne upped their edge to 20-7 on Sean Sipsey’s 3-yard run, set up by Frasco’s 51-yard kickoff return, to lead by 13 at the half. Nick Goldsack’s two second half TD runs (17 yards, 5 yards) sealed the deal.
“I thought our kids did a good job of rallying back together,” Nimblett said. “This is huge for our program, huge for our kids.”
