Campbell QB Mikey Grace gets sacked by Epping's Jack Vigllotte (1) and Jack Richards during Saturday's Division III clash in Litchfield. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

LITCHIELD – All good things must come to an end.

That’s what happened to the Campbell High School long regular season football winning streak on Saturday, as the Epping-Newmarket squad came to Cougar Country and left with a 28-16 win.

And the Blue Devils (3-2) took with them the honor of snapping the Cougars’ regular season win streak at 25. Monadnock Regional was the last team to topple Campbell back in late October of 2022, the second of two straight losses, and ironically the Cougars went on to win the Division III title that year.

Yesterday the Devils jumped out to a 14-0 led and never looked back. Campbell got to within 14-8 in the first half and 21-16 heading into the final quarter.

But the first play of the fourth quarter, a fourth-and-2 from the E-N 41, proved to be disastrous as a high snap sailed all the way back to the Blue Devil 29. It took Epping-Newmarket seven plays with sophomore back Cole Amada scoring his fourth TD of the day from a yard out and Brett Hynds’ fourth PAT of the day gave the Devils a 28-16 lead with 6:36 to play.

“It feels like we belong,” Blue Devils coach Ron Ross said. “In our eyes we were 4-0. We’ve played a tough schedule, Gilford, Laconia (one and nine-point losses), we were right there at the end … We thought we could come in here catch them in a lull, thinking we were a 28-8 easy win. We shut them down. … We capitalized on everything they gave us.”

And besides the bad snap mistake, the Cougars gave the Devils a few more things, fumbling twice and hurting themselves with penalties.

“Epping is a very good football team and Coach Ross does a fantastic job with those guys,” Campbell coach Glen Costello said. “We made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes. Today I think is a very good teachable moment that you can’t get away with everything all the time.

“Epping played very hard.They earned this win from the get-go.”

The Devils were led by Amada, who set the tone by ripping off an 18-yard run on the first play from scrimmage en route to 138 yards on 19 carries for the day. That started a nine-play, 63-yard scoring drive as his 4-yard run made it 7-0.

After a Cougar drive stalled at midfield, Amada ripped off a 52-yard TD run and suddenly it was 14-0 with 3:22 left in the opening period. The Cougars were in for a game.

The flip side, Campbell enjoyed long drives but not what the Cougars needed in terms of time. They had basically only one breakaway run, despite the fact backs Brody Pinciaro (90 yards on 20 carries) and Braydon White (16 for 116) were more than steady. White raced 31 yards on the second play of the second quarter for a TD and also got the first of his two 2-point conversions and it was 14-8. But that was Campbell’s best run of the day.

“Those guys tackled, those guys were changing the line of scrimmage at times,” Costello said. “Their backers were very aggressive. We were one block away from popping it, but we just never got that one block.”

The Devils responded with an eight-play scoring drive of their own, going just 48 yards thanks to a Cougar squib kick, with Amada going wide on a fourth down run for six yards and a TD with 6:04 to play to help make it 21-8. Campbell had trouble stopping hm in space.

“He’s a very good back, he’ll be one of the better backs in the division, a young kid, too,” Costello said. “We had an opportunity to tackle him in the backfield (on the TD) and just missed.”

To add insult to injury, Campbell then had driven down to the E-N 20 with just under a minute to play, but the Cougars chance at an important answer going into the half evaporated thanks to the first of two lost fumbles.

They did close to 21-16 on a 12-play, 74-yard march to start the second half, sparked by a 23-yard Pinciaro run and he rumbled in from 5 yards out and Campbell added the two-point conversion with 1:15 left in the third quarter. There was even more optimism when they recovered the ensuing on-side kick. But that all died with the fourth-down high snap on what was a wildcat setup for Pinciaro that ended up positioning the Devils for their game-clinching score.

“Our center (Caleb Vaillancourt) has been one of our best players all year long,” Costello said. “He’s been very good snap-wise so, just all the pieces. He’s been our best lineman all year.”

And now Campbell tries to find a positive in a negative.

“At the end of the day, this is probably a very good teachable moment that you have to do all the little things correctly throughout the week,” Costello said.