Telegraph photo by TOM KING Campbell's Drew Adamakos reaches for Monadnock running back Justin Joslyn during the Huskies' 28-20 win over the host Cougars in Litchfield on Saturday.

LITCHFIELD – Sometimes it’s all about connections.

And make no mistake, the Monadnock High School football team had one that cost the Campbell football team a win on Saturday.

Trailing 14-6 after three quarters, Huskies quarterback Nate Doyle connected with receiver Zion Carroll not once, not twice, but three times in the fourth quarter on TD passes of 36, 25, and 24 yards for a 28-20 Monadnock win.

“The kid made a couple of good plays, we blew coverage, they took advantage of it,” Cougars coach Glenn Costello said. “My hats off to them.”

“Those two guys have been working hard to get a connection going,” Monadnock coach Ryan Avery said. “And they’ve done that. They’ve created good relationship where they know each other pretty well.”

The first one came just a minute and a half into the fourth quarter, and Huskies back Justin Joslyn lunged to get the ball over the goal line for the game-tying two-point conversion.

The second came with 7:46 left, a 25 yarder for the go-ahead score, Joslyn again running it in for the conversion to put the Huskies up 22-14.

Connection No. 3 – they were all on the right side of the field – enhanced a 22-20 Huskies lead, making it 28-20 with 3:01 to play.

That was a tough pill to swallow for the Cougars, who, after trailing 6-0 with 1:12 left in the first quarter on a Doyle fourth-and-goal 1-yard plunge, evened things up 21 seconds later on their own connection. Sophomore quarterback Jackson Kanaley hit Will McPherson on a 40-yard strike with 51.2 ticks left in the first to even things at 6.

The Cougars then took their only lead of the game on Hunter Caron’s 37-yard burst with a minute left in the half. The two-point Kanaley to McPherson pass was good and it was 14-6.

So what happened? The Cougars were never the same after a 58-yard Kanaley-McPherson hookup was called back due to a chop block penalty on the second play of the third quarter. And later, with the game tied, the Cougars fumbled a snap, the Huskies recovered with 9:02 left and it led to the winning score.

“We knew it would be a sloppy football game when it came to those,” Costello said, “and the team that had the least amount of those would win. Hats off to Monadnock.”

“You have to capitalize on that stuff (mistakes),” Avery said. “We talked about that. They’re a great team, right? You give them extra downs and things like that, they’re just going to kill you.”

One thing Campbell did, as Costello mentioned, was fight back. Trailing 22-14, the Cougars’ John Newell ran a QB draw 52 yards to paydirt with 5:38 left. But a two-point conversion pass attempt fell incomplete and the Huskies still led, 22-20.

Monadnock’s Ethan Jarvis pounced on an on-sides kick and the Huskies were in business for Connection No. 3. Following that, the Cougars fumbled the ensuing kickoff and ran out the clock.

“We were playing a little soft on defense, I thought,” Avery said, so his team made some adjustments and slowed the Cougars’ run game. Caron and Newell ran for 81 and 80 yards, respectively, a big chunk of Campbell’s 186 yards on the ground.

“It’s tough to run the ball against Monadnock,” Costello said. “Coach Avery does a good job year after year.”

And that job this time around produced 333 yards of total offense, including 230 on the ground. But the connecting flights were the difference.

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