By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

To steal a phrase from baseball great and master of the malaprop Yogi Berra, last Friday night’s District 1 Class 5A opening round playoff game between Kennett and Oxford seemed like “déjà vu all over again.”

Indeed, it was; just a week before, the Blue Demons overcame a 13-0 deficit to score 17 consecutive points in a 17-13 comeback victory over visiting Oxford on Oct. 24 at Kennett Stadium, and as the Halloween night game got underway, the idea that Oxford would seek retribution on their opponents was front and center.

It was not to be. Behind three touchdowns by freshman Joalex Carabajal and a defense that held 11th-seeded Oxford scoreless for all but the last seconds of the game, Kennett – seeded sixth in a 27-team Class 5A Playoff field - advanced to the second round of the playoffs with a convincing 35-6 win, pushing their overall record to 9-2 and setting up a quarterfinal game on Nov. 7 at Bayard Rustin, who defeated Henderson, 42-0 in opening round play.

If “possession” is considered nine-tenths of the law, then it would be only proper to have found Kennett’s first-half offense guilty. After its first series of downs – which concluded with a missed 38-yard field goal attempt by kicker Shay Barker with 8:32 left in the first quarter – the Blue Demons again burned up the clock on its next possession with a 60-yard touchdown drive that ended when quarterback Garrett McCracken found wide receiver Hunter Taylor with a 12-yard TD pass with 1:54 left in the quarter that jumped Kennett out to a 7-0 lead.

As the second quarter got underway, Oxford sought to get back in the game, when on fourth-and-one on its 18-yard line, a fake punt and run by Braden Hunt earned the Hornets a first down, which was followed by a 48-yard rush by Jake Patterson that moved the ball to Kennett’s 25-yard line. A pass from quarterback Noland Neskie to Patterson took Oxford to the Kennett six-yard line, but on the next snap, Patterson was tackled for a seven-yard loss by Brian Dougherty and Andrew Clancy, setting up a fourth-and-eight pass that was deflected in the end zone by a Blue Demon defender.

Behind McCracken, Kennett promptly engineered a 13-play, 87-yard drive that ended with a 17-yard McCracken-to-Carabajal touchdown pass with 1:58 left in the first half.

Carrying a two-touchdown lead into the second half, Kennett’s defense again shut down Oxford early in the third quarter with three consecutive incomplete passes and, to further add to their offensive woes, the Hornets lost their running back Joel McClain, who sustained an injury with 9:50 left in the quarter and was removed from the game.

Kennett then jumped out to a 21-0 lead on an 11-play drive that concluded with Carabajal’s second touchdown – a 13-yard touchdown pass from McCracken with 5:30 left in the third quarter. The McCracken-to-Carabajal combination clicked for a third time at the start of the fourth quarter, when after a 27-yard run by Carabajal gave the Blue Demons possession on Oxford’s 18-yard line and his next run brought the ball to the seven-yard line, McCracken found a wide-open Carabajal in the corner of the end zone with 8:19 left in the game that gave Kennett a 28-0 lead.

The Blue Demons wrapped up their scoring effort on a 26-yard rushing touchdown by Dougherty with 5:18 remaining in the game, and after holding the Hornets scoreless for nearly four quarters, a 12-yard pass from Neskie to Patterson got Oxford on the scoreboard with 20 seconds left in the game. 

Kennett’s quarterfinal playoff game at the Golden Knights’ home field on Nov. 7 will serve as a true test for Head Coach Lance Frazier’s squad, whose roster is heavily dotted with underclassmen. Bayard Rustin – seeded No. 3 in the PIAA 1 5A playoff structure - won this season’s Ches-Mont American division with a 5-0 record, which included a 31-10 victory on Sept. 19 over the Blue Demons, whose only other loss came at the hands of Avon Grove, who shut down Kennett 14-10 on Oct. 17. 

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].