PELHAM – Bow head coach Paul Cohen stood near midfield at Pelham High School on Saturday evening and cited a quote from the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw: “Success covers a multitude of blunders.”
“Well, we made the multitude of blunders, but we didn’t have enough success,” Cohen said after his team’s 28-7 loss to No. 2 Pelham (11-0) in the D-II semifinals.
No. 3 Bow (9-2) could not find the running game it had relied on all year, nor could the Falcons rely on their defense to make critical stops.
The game began with each team trading three and outs. Then on their second possession, Falcon quarterback Owen Walton had trouble with a snap that Pelham’s Memphis Patterson recovered at the Bow 13-yard line. However, the Pythons then committed back-to-back penalties, went for it on fourth-and-18 and turned it over on downs. The Falcons caught a break.
On Pelham’s next possession, Bow wasn’t as fortunate. Dom Herrling plowed in a 4-yard touchdown run as the first quarter clock expired to put the Pythons ahead 7-0.
Late in the second quarter, Pelham doubled its lead after quarterback Jake Travis’ 4-yard sneak, and in the third, Ethan Demmonds added a 28-yard rushing touchdown. With an offense that hadn’t produced much all game, the deficit felt insurmountable for Bow.
On the ensuing kickoff, though, the Falcons ran a trick play on the return that set up Logan Gordon for a long run to the Pelham 44-yard line. The creativity seemed to swing momentum, at least temporarily. A few plays later, Walton found Ben Berube on a 20 yard pass in the end zone to get the Falcons on the board.
That was the closest the game would get. Pelham erased any hopes of a Bow comeback with 5:41 in the fourth quarter when Herrling ran back a pick six for the Pythons to make it 28-7.
It was the first time the Falcons had lost a game in nearly two months. And now, their season is over.
“There’s very much a harsh reality,” Cohen said of the loss ending his team’s season. “Unlike our regular season loss where we knew we still had a whole bunch of games, and we could rebuild and all that, this group is done now. They’ll never play as a team (again).”
It was an overall triumphant season for Bow, and it was one played with heavy hearts. Just 14 months ago, the program and community suffered the tragic loss of Nick Ouellette and his younger brother Gavin in a car crash.
“This is a very special group of seniors,” Cohen said. “They dealt with a tragedy last year, and they turned that into a catalyst to work as hard as they possibly could. We could not have asked anything more from them. They put the time in on the field, off the field. They (were) great role models for the younger players to emulate moving forward, and I told them that, ‘I will always remember you guys as an entity that set a high standard. You’ve earned the respect of the school, the town, your opponents, and that’s something that nobody can take away from you, even when you fall in playoffs as we did today.’”
Pelham advances to face No. 4 Souhegan who upset No. 1 Gilford-Belmont, 29-28, in the other semifinal matchup. Meanwhile, Bow will ruminate on what could’ve been.
“I thank the seniors and the team for making it so exciting, so invigorating,” Cohen said. “Every week, we knew that we were in it. Every week, we brought our brand of football around the state. But unfortunately today, it was just not our day.”