Bishop Guertin wins 2nd straight Division II title

NASHUA – Now the debate can begin, and it may not even be much of one.

Was the 2009 Bishop Guertin High School football team the best the school has ever had?

“Yes,” BG head coach Tony Johnson could finally say after the Cardinals capped their 12-0 season with a 31-0 win over Winnacunnet of Hampton in Saturday’s Division II final before a Stellos Stadium crowd of about 3,000. “This team was a little bit different, a little bit special, for really one reason. We had 34 seniors on this team, and we never missed a beat. … This team came in focused every single game.

“I’m just unbelievably excited for these 34 seniors. This is a dream team.”

And a nightmare for so many opponents. The Cardinals, now winners of back-to-back titles and five in the last six years, never seemed satisfied. That trait was epitomized by their grumbling after beating Keene in the pouring rain 41-19 four weeks ago. It was the only game BG trailed in all season. No one scored on them the rest of the way, with regular season shutouts over Alvirne and Exeter, and playoff shutouts over the Broncos again and now the Warriors.

“We were a little ticked off (leaving Keene),” BG linebacker/fullback Nick Phillips said. “The mindset was 19 points, no one should be doing that to our defense. We just really took it to heart and were flying around the rest of the games. Three straight shutouts, why let up for the championship game?”

When all was said and done, the Warriors (6-4) managed only 125 total yards. They managed an early 30-yard run by Jason Busfield that raised some eyebrows, but nothing close to that thereafter. Forget even a sniff of the end zone, Winnacunnet never making it beyond the BG 35, and that was where the Warriors wound up on their first series.

“The defense has been that good all season,” Johnson said. “We’re so fast. If we made a mistake defensively, we could run people down, regroup, and start all over again.”

Winnacunnet played the Cardinals tough, trailing only 10-0 at the half. In fact, the game was scoreless with just under three minutes to go before the first of three Mike Kelly touchdowns came on a 46-yard pass from junior quarterback Steve Cuipa. Kelly then broke things open with two third-quarter touchdowns within two minutes of each other – one on a 20-yard end-around and the other on a 65-yard punt return.

Adam Hall’s 38-yard run with just under 11 minutes to play was the icing on the Green and Gold cake. Hall finished with 145 yards on 23 carries, called “a star on a team with 21 stars.”

“I felt 10-0 at halftime, OK, this is what we want,” Warriors head coach Ron Auffant said. “I thought we put on a good show, and I thought a lot of people didn’t think it would be close. We made them work for it, made them earn it. We just have to get a little bit better.

“You’re playing a good defensive team, you have to capitalize on opportunities, you’ve got to make plays.”

And instead, it was the Cardinals (303 yards of offense) who made the plays, thanks mainly to Kelly, whom Johnson called “a special kid” and who was doubtful up until late in the week with a high ankle sprain that kept him out of the semifinal win over Alvirne.

But with 2:51 left in what had been a scoreless first half, Cuipa found Kelly down the right sideline for the game’s first score.

“I thought Winnacunnet defensively played a great game, I really did,” Johnson said. “We were trying to set up that play for probably three minutes. It was there, we were just trying to get to distance we wanted, and the situation we wanted. I was pretty confident we would put up at least seven points on the board (before the half).”

But BG got 10, thanks to a bad Warriors shotgun snap, the ball recovered by the Cardinals’ Walter Kell at the Warriors’ 22 with just over a minute remaining. Penalties forced BG to settle for Ryan Card’s 39-yard field goal.

The second Warriors fumble of the game, this one with just over four minutes gone in the third quarter, proved to be most costly. BG recovered at the Warriors’ 20 and two plays later Kelly scampered in on a reverse for a 20-yard touchdown that helped make it 17-zip with exactly seven minutes left in the period. After a Warrior three-and-out, Kelly took a punt at his own 35, cut to his right, hurdled one tackler and then cut back the other way to paydirt to help seal the win.

“I had great blocking, you can’t forget about the blocking on that,” said Kelly, crediting teammate Matt Bayne with a key hit.

“It really put Winnacunnet in a tough position,” Johnson said. “Every time he touches the ball, he’s a legitimate threat of going to the house.”

One wonders how different things might have been had Warriors receiver Harry Knowles not let two potential touchdown passes slip through his fingers, one in each half – the first coming on the last play of a scoreless first period.

“You’ve got to make those plays,” Auffant said. “We make plays we could’ve scored maybe two or three times. He usually catches them, but I can’t fault the kid.”

The difference was, the Cardinals made those plays all year, and on Saturday.

“It was an honor to be with this offense,” said Cuipa, who as 3-of-6 for 85 yards and one touchdown. “It was fun. They’re all great players.”

Making it a great team – most likely in Bishop Guertin circles, the greatest of them all.