QUINCY — The No. 2 St. Mary’s football team had to deal with multiple impactful injuries at Veterans Memorial Stadium in the Division 6 semifinal Friday night, and the Spartans came up short to Abington by a score of 26-21.
Abington was without its head coach on the evening. The Boston Herald’s Danny Ventura was the first to report that Jim Kelliher wouldn’t be on the sidelines due to COVID-19 protocols. Besides clinching a Division 6 Super Bowl berth, a victory over St. Mary’s gave the head coach the 300th win of his career.
The Spartans fumbled a kickoff and gave up a sack on a third down on their final drive of the game; this ultimately doomed the team to defeat.
“We had trouble stopping them (Abington),” said St. Mary’s head coach Sean Driscoll. “They have a good offense and a good team and we knew it was going to be a dog fight, but we had a chance at the end and we couldn’t execute. It turns into a fire drill when you lose one or two guys and it was tough to bounce back. I’m proud of the way my guys competed. They showed up to play, they practiced hard all week, and the only positive out of all this is we have a lot of guys coming back next year and we are playing for the CCL (Catholic Conference League) title on Thanksgiving.”
Those one or two guys that Driscoll mentioned were David Brown and Derick Coulanges. While Brown stayed in the game while battling lower-body cramping and finished the night with 147 yards rushing, Coulanges left the game midway through the night with an upper-body injury. The junior was helped off the field after rushing for 61 yards on seven carries; he would not return to the game.
Driscoll said that he told the Spartans that their ability to compete after those two major blows shows that they are a good team.
The game couldn’t have started better for St. Mary’s, which drove 52 yards down the field in about four minutes. The Spartans started their drive on their own 48 yard-line and relied on Brown to gain most of the yards on the ground, with three carries for 22 yards on the opening drive.
Quarterback Ali Barry was the one who found the end zone, juking an Abington defender out of his shoes and giving the Spartans a 7-0 lead after Michael Anderson’s point-after attempt (PAT) was good.
The Green Wave responded with a methodical 54-yard drive down the field. After starting the drive with more than nine minutes left in the first quarter, Abington scored with just over a minute left in the first frame after Isaiah Ricketson ran two yards into the end zone.
After St. Mary’s jumped offside on the first PAT attempt, the Green Wave decided to go for two points and ended up coming up short; this allowed the Spartans to retain a 7-6 lead.
On St. Mary’s ensuing drive, which started on its own 37, the Abington defense managed to hold up the ground and pound the Spartans offense. On fourth down, St. Mary’s decided to run a fake punt that ended with the Green Wave taking over at their opponent’s 37-yard line.
St. Mary’s defense responded by forcing a turnover as Ricketson fumbled three minutes later; this allowed the Spartans to regain possession with a 7-6 lead and 8:26 left in the second quarter.
St. Mary’s proceeded to continue to run down the throats of Abington and drove 83 yards down the field in six minutes. Brown ran the ball into the end zone from a yard out and Anderson’s PAT attempt was good to give the Spartans a 14-6 lead.
Brown had an impressive first half, racking up 11 carries for 78 yards and that crucial touchdown. The Spartans took the lead into halftime and were two quarters away from reaching the Super Bowl.
Abington came out of the locker room blazing. They scored three minutes into the first drive of the third quarter, with Eddie Reilly throwing a 10-yard touchdown pass to Drew Donovan to conclude an 83-yard drive. After a successful two-point conversion, the game was tied at 14-14 with 8:58 left in the third quarter. Driscoll described that drive as the turning point of the game.
Brown broke off on a 46-yard run in the ensuing drive for the Spartans, but Abington’s defense forced a turnover on downs and it gained possession on its own 16-yard line with just over five minutes left in the third quarter.
Donovan did it again for the Green Wave, breaking off on a 60-yard rushing touchdown to give Abington its first lead of the night. Unfortunately for the Green Wave, the PAT attempt was no good but the touchdown gave them a 20-14 lead.
The Spartans regained possession on their own 44-yard line after a quality return from Brown, but St. Mary’s went three and out and were forced to punt. The defense answered the bell for the Spartans and St. Mary’s regained possession at its opponent’s 49-yard line.
Barry led the Spartans down the field for an impressive 49-yard drive that concluded with the quarterback running15 yards into the end zone and after a successful PAT, St. Mary’s had a 21-20 lead with nine minutes left in the game.
But Abington started its next drive on its own 31-yard line and drove 69 yards down the field. Kurtis Lucas-Summers completed what turned out to be a game-clinching 4-yard touchdown rush; this gave the Green Wave the lead with the score at 26-21 with under three minutes left in the game.
The Spartans play Austin Prep in their final game of 2021 on Thanksgiving Eve.
