BRISTOL – The Newington football team’s defense had not given up a touchdown in five games this season, until Friday night against Bristol Central.
On Bristol Central’s first series – three plays in – the Rams scored on Newington.
“Stuff happens,” Newington junior defensive back Kelvin McKnight said. “If you keep your head down, you’re going to look down, if you keep your head up, you’re going to play up. We kept our heads up and we played up.”
Stuff happened again, in the fourth quarter. The Newington defense had just stopped Bristol Central, leaving the Rams stranded on a fourth-and-13. The Nor’easters had the ball back with two minutes left – and fumbled.
Here came the defense back on the field. Four plays later, McKnight had an interception of a pass from Bristol Central quarterback Donovan Rodriguez to give Newington (6-0) a 14-7 victory over the previously unbeaten Rams in a CCC Tier III game.
“(Bristol Central) is averaging 36.8 (points) a game, so I said 27-15 final,” Newington coach John Acquavita said. “I thought they would score. They run a very methodical patient prey-on-you-to-be-sort-of-bored and do something wacky….but the defense played well. It was only fitting they were on the field to win the game for us.”
Newington, which went 2-8 last season, has four shutouts in six games. The only touchdown against the Nor’easters came against Danbury on Sept. 28 when the Hatters recovered a fumble and scored.
Newington scored in the first minute on an Evan Pigott 2-yard run. Three plays later, there was Bristol Central’s Maliki Holley streaking down the field for a 64-yard touchdown to take a 7-6 lead with 10:13 left in the first quarter.
But then Newington’s defense settled down. At the start of the third quarter, it stopped Bristol Central on a fourth-and-2 on the Newington 26 yard line and in Newington’s next series, the Nor’easters scored on a 31-yard pass from Enzo Corvino to Aiden Bengston and the two-point conversion (also Corvino to Bengston) was good to give Newington a 14-7 lead.
“It was tough in the first half but we really pulled together, stopping that QB and just taking over,” senior linebacker Zach Girolamo said.
“(The Bristol Central touchdown) threw me off especially because it was kind of my fault, but we bounced back. We weren’t worrying. We knew we had to restart.”
Bristol Central had the ball with about four minutes left but on the first play, senior Khalil Stewart tackled Rodriguez for an eight-yard loss, then Girolamo sacked Rodriguez twice. With 2:32 left, Newington got the ball back but fumbled on the second play.
“We all just put it out on the field and wanted it,” Stewart said.
Mason Hill, one of three junior linebackers for Newington (Heath Weeden and Victor Rodriguez are the other two) had a sack on the first play of the series. A few plays later, McKnight picked off the pass and it was over.
“The D line doesn’t get a lot of credit – they played very well today – we have four outstanding linebackers and then the secondary is just smart – they don’t do anything out of the realm of what they can do,” Acquavita said. “We’re lucky – we’re backed up at the far end with smart, we’re really rough at linebacker and we have a rotating D line that knows they get shuffled in and out and they hold their ground. And it’s working.”