How sweet it is.
Whether it was sheer willpower, or gutsy determination or just pure Red Raider mojo, it mattered not. In the end, once again, the Barnstable High School Red Raider football team proved to be the best.
And it can thank so many, in particular, senior co-captain and running back extraordinaire Hayden Murphy. Murphy talled 124 yards on 14 carries and two touchdowns on the night to lead Barnstable to a 20-14 come-from-behind victory, including a 48-yard jaunt with 1:02 left in the 4th quarter to win the game. It will be a run never to be forgotten in the vaunted lore of Barnstable's 121 years of high school football.
On 4th and 1 and down 14-12 with no timeouts remaining, Murphy took the hand-off from senior quarterback Kristian Lucashensky and bolted for daylight to put Barnstable ahead 18-14. Lucashensky then found senior wideout Derek Estes in the end zone for the two-point PAT to seal it at 20-14.
It was yet another game where the Barnstable defense did not allow a single point by an opponent in the second half. Battered, bruised and behind, the Red Raider defense did not relent and held Bridgewater-Raynham running back Brandon Gallagher at bay.
But not in the first half. In the first half, it was pretty much all Bridgewater-Raynham as the hosts took a 14-6 lead into the intermission on touchdowns by Arcel Armstead and Mike Murano. Barnstable senior running back Justus Chaffee gave the Red Raiders the only offense they could muster in the first half with a brilliant 24-yard touchdown run in the second quarter to tie the game at 6-6.
Barnstable would not score again until late in the third quarter on a Hayden Murphy 31-yard rush. Chaffee finished with 63 yards rushing on six carries and a touchdown, almost all of it in the first half. He also had kickoff returns of 30 and 20 yards to give him 113 all-purpose yards on the night.
With Barnstable leading 20-14 with 57.4 seconds remaining in the game, however, B-R still had a chance. That was, of course, until Derek Estes stepped into the breach and picked off a Matt Clement pass to finalize what very well may be remembered as yet another major upset in a season of upsets for the Red & White. Barnstable is now in first place in the Old Colony League and 5-1 overall heading into next Friday night's OCL tilt at home versus Dartmouth. Should Barnstable win that game next Friday night at W. Leo Shields Memorial Field, it will have captured its third straight league title, something that has not occurred at BHS since the 1930s.
