SHRUB OAK – After sending his quarterback into the huddle with instructions to heave and hope, Lakeland coach Ryan Schilling was already formulating words of consolation to dull the sting of another disappointing loss to a forever rival.
It’s kind of standard operating procedure on fourth-and-33 in overtime.
The Hornets stormed back from a 28-14 deficit in the second half and knotted the score Friday at Yorktown. And they were driving for a win in regulation but let too much time slip away.
So, it was on to overtime.
The Huskers were first up and overcame their own down-and-distance mess before Eamon Coney ran for a six-yard touchdown. Frank Imbrogno gave Lakeland a needed jolt of adrenaline when he blocked the extra point following a string of penalties
that backed the kick up.
The Hornets lined up and immediately lost ground. Keeping the faith on fourth-and-33 with the game on the line is a big ask. Schilling made a quarterback switch on the fly and sent Gio LaPeruta into the huddle with some basic instructions.
“We rotate quarterbacks,” he said. “Gio has a little bit of a stronger arm and is a little bit more elusive so we put him in for the Hail Mary just because you have to roam around a little. … I just told Gio, ‘Hey, give them some time to get down field.”
Lakeland was completely unrehearsed. There is no Hail Mary call in the playbook.
“Boys, we gotta come down with this one,” LaPeruta barked to his team in the huddle. “We’re going Hail Mary. Everyone runs straight.”
Set. Hut.
“We battled and battled and battled throughout, coming back over and over,” Schilling noted. “To be quite honest, when it was fourth-and-33, I was preparing my, ‘Guys we did a great job, we worked hard, we battled' speech and then all of a sudden, magic happened.”
The snap came to LaPeruta at midfield. He drifted left and hung on until a trio of Yorktown defenders converged, then lofted a pass downfield.
“I saw (Mike Lucia) down there,” LaPeruta said. “I’ve been throwing the ball to him since I was 2 years old and I knew he would make a play.”
The ball was up for grabs when Anthony Ray stepped between a pair of Yorktown defensive backs and got a hand up to keep the play alive. It deflected off a third Huskers player before Lucia made a grab at the 12 in traffic with his back to the end zone.
The senior was two yards short of a first down.
Chris Spence was hustling back across the field all the while and was suddenly the right guy in the right place at the right time. Again, it was an unscripted moment. Lucia had a defender on his back as the cagey sophomore came into focus.
There was no hesitation.
“When the ball was in the air, I didn’t initially think it was intended for me, so I just watched it and hoped one of my teammates would come down with it,” Lucia said. “But when the ball came down, it bounced off Anthony then a Yorktown defender before it popping back into the air. In that moment, I knew I had to catch it … then I realized I was short and had to make something happen or the game was over.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris and thought, ‘Let me flip it to him and see what he can do.”
Spence controlled the heads-up lateral at the 15 and won a race to the pylon.
“I knew the ball was going to be tipped,” he explained. “I was on the other side of the field, near the sideline so I ran to the other side. Mike just threw it to me. It all happened perfectly. … Everything happened so fast. I don’t even remember running. It just all just happened.”
Touchdown.
Yes, the crowd went absolutely wild. This crosstown rivalry has some heat no matter the sport and both sides were involved throughout.
The Hornets still had to convert the extra point.
Dylan Vazquez, a sophomore who splits time between the JV and varsity, was on the spot and on the clock.
“He’s a defensive back for us on the JV level but on varsity, he’s our kicker,” Schilling said. “And I’m just telling him, ‘Calm down. Easy.’ Meanwhile, my heart is racing. I don’t know how he was able to keep his cool. … Nobody rushed the field (after the touchdown). Everybody stayed collected and did their job, and that was sort of the message the whole game, one play at a time.”
Obviously, the kick was good.
Lakeland spent the entire weekend celebrating a 35-34 win, the program’s first win over Yorktown since 2009.
“It came down to a couple of unfortunate bounces for us and (Lucia) making that catch and (Spence) making an unbelievably heads up play,” Huskers coach Pantelis Ypsilantis said. “You know how at the end of NFL games they put a win probability on the screen? I’m curious how high the win probability was on fourth-and-33. Our kids were disappointed, but we congratulated Lakeland and were on to the next game. Even after a loss like that one, it’s been a great week of practice.”
Spence figures he’s watched the replay 100 times and LaPeruta guesses he’s viewed it 200 times. It’s a clip that will be taking up memory on multiple cell phones for years to come.
“It was one of one,” Spence added.
All weekend long, it was a did-you-see-that-play conversation starter across Section 1.
“That play wasn’t about one individual,” texted Lucia, who was diagnosed with mono this week and is sidelined indefinitely. “It was a complete team effort. We all played a part in making that happen. We had to do the unthinkable and that’s exactly what we did.”
Mike Dougherty covers high school football for The Journal News/lohud.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: How Lakeland football survived 4th-and-33 in overtime to beat Yorktown
