Longmont’s Conlan Berger celebrates the two-point conversion that gave his team an 8-7 win over Windsor. More photos. (Kai Casey/CHSAANow.com)
LONGMONT — It hung in the air against a sky devoid of color, and seemed to reach the top of the light banks beyond the stands.
Eli Sullivan ran underneath it, and the hopes of a team ran beside him. His arms reached out, and Sullivan looked the ball into his hands.
He caught it.
What?
He caught it.
The game, which looked to be over, wasn’t. In fact, Sullivan’s reception, off a 45-yard pass from freshman Oakley Dehning, brought second-ranked Longmont to within 7-6 of third-ranked Windsor in the final seconds a huge Class 4A football game on Thursday night. The Trojans converted a two-point conversion a few moments later to secure an 8-7 win over the Wizards, and send a flood of pink-clad students onto the field on a crisp October evening.
“It wasn’t a call to anyone,” Sullivan said of the play. “It was whoever was open.”
“That was a huge play,” said Longmont coach Doug Johnson. “We wanted to take a shot there. We were kind of running out of some options.”
A few minutes earlier, Longmont had run the same play, which resulted in an interception. Sullivan, on the sideline, told his young quarterback that the backside was open. Next time, he had told Dehning, he should look for it.
This was next time. Only, this was different.
“This time,” Sullivan said, “he realized the backside was open.”
Windsor had dominated this game, especially with its swift, sure-tackling defense. Longmont had lost starting quarterback David Speidel to a shoulder injury on its first drive, and with him most of the potency the offense had shown in that opening march, which ended in a fumble at Windsor’s 8-yard-line.
Yet the Trojans’ defense kept it close, and kept Longmont in the game. To even get the ball back for the final drive, the defense made a stop at its own 10-yard-line with 1:29 to play.
“The defense gave us the momentum we needed to win the game,” Johnson said. “That’s just the bottom line.”
More photos. (Kai Casey/CHSAANow.com)
In relief, Dehning, a freshman, was thrown into the fire. He is on the Trojans’ punt team as an upback, but had yet to throw a varsity pass through six games. Longmont star Conlan Berger later said, “He does not see the field very much. It was pretty crazy. We were all just trying to calm him on down on offense: ‘It’s OK, dude.'”
At times, Dehning did look like a freshman quarterback who was playing in his first varsity game against the No. 3-ranked team in the state, one that features one of the best defenses in 4A — a very physical one, at that.
Dehning was 1-of-11 passing until the decisive play, but his final throw found a wide-open Sullivan around the 10-yard-line, and Sullivan dipped past the two defenders standing between him and the end zone.
“He was awesome,” Berger said of Dehning. “He stepped up and took it like a man. I’m sure it was scary for him. I remember my first time on varsity. So he stepped up and played great.”
After the touchdown, it was bedlam. The Longmont crowd, donning mostly pick in support of breast cancer awareness, went crazy. Their students soon lined the field.
On the sideline, the question was whether or not Longmont would go for two in an attempt to win the game. That question did not linger. Johnson, the Trojans’ coach, quickly sent his offense out onto the field. He would say later that, “We make those decision in advance. I don’t like making that decision on the spot.”
Besides, Berger said, “Coach Johnson’s an all-in kind of guy. Either we go all-in or we don’t. So we all knew he was going to go for two, especially at home.”
And so Longmont went for two.
The Trojans handed the ball off to Berger on a jet sweep to the left, a play that hadn’t had much success on Thursday night until the final drive, when Berger himself ran for 36 yards on three attempts at it. Berger was the perfect choice. He had 115 yards Thursday, and is the team’s leading rusher this season, just as he was in 2014.
Berger darted left — picking up a great block from Sullivan on the edge — and converted the play to give Longmont the lead.
“I just saw the pylon and open grass over there after Eli got a good block,” Berger said.
Windsor got the ball back with 6.8 seconds to play, but was unable to pull off a miracle of its own, leaving Longmont with an important 8-7 victory, one that will be remembered well into the playoffs and perhaps beyond.