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Tomahawks hold on for 28-26 must-win over Panthers

By Tom King - Staff Writer | Sep 18, 2021

Merrimack's Jason Duke (58) tries to get ahold of Nashua South;s Connor Rowsell during the Tomahawks' 28-26 win on Friday night in Merrimack. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

MERRIMACK — It was a game that neither team could afford to lose.

Both the Merrimack and Nashua High School South football teams were going into Friday night’s contest at MHS Student Memorial Field with 0-2 records and trying to shed the memory of tough losses the week before.

The Tomahawks did a better job of that, escaping with a 28-26 win, their first of the season, and putting the Panthers in a brutal 0-3 hole.

The two teams played a scoreless fourth quarter as defenses finally took over.

“I thought it was going to be a game like last week, last drive of the game, in the 40s,” Merrimack coach Kip Jackson said, referring to last week’s last second loss to Nashua North. “Both teams made some adjustments (defensively) and thankfully we came out on top.”

The Panthers had their chances in the final period. A drive stalled early at the Tomahawk 28 and they began a drive at their own 14 with 5:59 left but that died at their own 37 on a fourth down incompletion with 1:11 left. It didn’t help that their best offensive weapon, back Josh Compoh, was sidelined with a leg injury he suffered in the third quarter and could only run a couple of plays in the fourth. He rushed for 178 yards and three TDs.

There’s no way South coach Scott Knight could have envisioned an 0-3 start going into the season.

“No, never in a million years,” Knight said. “But then again, if you had said you’re going to have this guy out, this guy out, and you won’t be able to finish with these guys, I’d buy that.

“But we have to find a way to finish games, because we’re playing teams with their best players in the games, and we’re not. We need our guys on the field.”

Merrimack was paced by quarterback Kyle Crampton, who threw for 181 yards and two TDs and ran for another score, that being a 4-yard touchdown that helped put the Tomahawks up 28-20 with 10:21 left in the third quarter. That came after he directed an incredible 52-yard march in the final 32 seconds of the first half to put Merrimack up 21-20 going into halftime.

And he sealed the deal with a 25-yard fourth down run on the final play of the game as the clock hit zero.

“We knew we had to win this game,” Crampton said. “We balled out in practice, we stuck together, we didn’t quit on each other. Some teams might have quit after losing that bad last week. We don’t give up, we stayed alive, and we moved on to the next game as if nothing happened last week.”

“He’s a great leader, really grown in that respect,” Jackson said. “And both he and Shea (Goodwin) wanted the game on their shoulders and it showed by the game they had tonight.”

Goodwin caught a game-tying 11-yard TD pass from Crampton in the second quarter, but the biggest play he made was blocking South’s PAT kick after Compoh’s 3-yard TD run put South up 20-14 with 39 seconds left in the half.

“We fell asleep on the wing, got that (kick) blocked, and that cost us the game,” Knight said. “That cost us the game, because we were chasing points.”

That’s because, trailing 28-20 in the third, Compoh ripped off a 47-yard TD that brough the Panthers to within 28-26 with 3:35 left in the third. But the Panthers couldn’t run it in for what would have been a game-tying two-point conversion.

The teams went back and forth in the first half, South with a Compoh 4-yard TD run and QB Mike Rutstein an 18-yard jaunt. Merrimack countered with two Crampton game-tying TD tosses, the one to Goodwin and a 10-yard flip to another offensive catalyst, Reimello Hyde.

It certainly looked like South would take a 20-14 lead into intermission, but a squib kick to the Merrimack 48 set up three plays, the key one a 31-yard completion from Crampton to Braden Page that was almost intercepted by Lorenzo Abreu. The Panthers thought so, and were hit with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike call for apparently expressing that thought. Hyde ran it in from 7 yards out with six seconds left and Matt Schmitt’s third of four PAT kicks put the ‘Hawks up 21-20. Shocking.

“I was really disappointed with that,” Knight said. “That long play. Right before half. That (Merrimack drive) shouldn’t have happened.”

“The kids came back after last week’s game,” Jackson said, referring the loss to North on a last second field goal after blowing a 35-14 halftime lead. “That was as bad a loss as you could experience. But we had a good week of practice, they really picked themselves up and drew the line of what they wanted to be.”

Which right now is still alive and kicking.

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