Ten months ago, with the pending sale of Abeles Field, it was believed that the old gridiron had seen its final football game, the 19th consecutive loss by Immaculata.
But on Friday night, Abeles pushed back the passage of time for one more year, and with it came at least one more victory.
And what a glorious one it was. The Raiders, granted another season at the historical stadium, jolted it back to life with a wave of fresh green paint, new Immaculata signs, and a dramatic 14-7 win over Horton that gave them their first victory since November, 2007.
Head coach Sean Sachen could hardly hold back the tears during the postgame Hail Mary prayer, when he knew his senior-laden team had won after so much adversity for so many years.
“When these seniors were in eighth grade ... they hadn’t won a game in anything all year,” Sachen said. “Before they became freshmen I said, ‘If you guys buy into what we’re doing, work hard, and stay focused, you’re going to win...’ They’ve finally bought in and figured out how to win, and that’s kind of the biggest thing. We wanted to teach them how to win, and I think they’ve figured it out.”
Despite outplaying the Chargers (0-1, 0-1 in Delaware Valley League play) for most of the night, the Raiders (1-0, 1-0 in the DVL) still trailed 7-6 before fullback Dustin Jostmeyer came out of the backfield to make a leaping catch at the goal line on third down for a 5-yard touchdown from Corey Leintz with 3:43 left in the third quarter, giving IHS a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
“I caught that ball, and it felt so good...” Jostmeyer said. “To be totally truthful, I was just hoping I didn’t drop it. Because everybody was counting — not just on me — but on that offensive drive, 14-or-15-play drive.”
Before Jostmeyer could run up the middle for the 2-point conversion which provided the final score, though, the game was delayed more than 20 minutes while an ambulance was rushed onto the field. Horton’s 304-pound defensive tackle Michael Thomas suffered a neck injury on the touchdown-scoring play and was taken off the field on a stretcher, able to move his extremities but unable to squeeze one of his hands.
With Thomas’ injury undoubtedly weighing heavy on their minds, Horton threatened to score throughout the remainder of the game but were turned away by a determined Raider defense. On back-to-back possessions quarterback Trent Bell was sacked on third down, first by Josh Boeppler and then by Jeff Meyer, but the IHS offense couldn’t stay on the field long enough to run out the clock. A fumbled pitch gave Horton the ball again with 2:58 left at their own 35-yard line.
With the game still in the balance, Horton drove inside the IHS 30-yard line before Patrick Boisson knocked down a fourth-down pass at the 10-yard line with 0:38 left, finally sealing the victory and releasing a victorious eruption from the Raider faithful that hadn’t been seen in more than two years.
“Coming off the field is just a surreal feeling,” senior Brad Holcomb said. “You look around and you don’t know what’s going on, but at the same time you know you won the game. It’s just crazy.”
Excitement was evident from the very beginning of what will now likely be the last season at Abeles. Such an occasion fittingly started with a bang when, on the first play from scrimmage, Leintz faked an end-around to the left and swept around the right for a 68-yard touchdown run.
“This is my favorite place, even when I played against Imac,” Sachen said. “And the first play, we had told the kids we were going to run that play first for a week. ... We sent two lead blockers for Corey if he made the pull, and he made a kid miss ... it was unbelievable.”
IHS held that 6-0 lead for nearly the entire first half, running the ball more often with more of a wing-T look to the spread offense they debuted last year. They needed only four passing attempts to outgain Horton 164-103 in the first half but couldn’t take advantage of chances to take the lead.
Meyer recovered a fumble on Horton’s first possession, and IHS connected twice on third-and-long passes to Jostmeyer and Connor Schmidling, but they were stopped in the red zone on fourth down. Boeppler recovered a fumble on Horton’s next play to set IHS up on the 21-yard line, but they fumbled it right back early in the second quarter.
Horton was able to take the lead later when Leintz, who averaged 36.3 yards per punt on Friday, unloaded one that may have outkicked his coverage and was returned 45 yards by Bell. Leintz tackled him at the 5-yard line to save the touchdown, but Mitchell Welch ran it in on the next play, and the PAT made it 7-6.
Cole Cannon blew into the backfield to stop Horton on third down to start the second half and force a punt. Discouraged by the fact that his fullback had only six carries in the first half, Sachen set the tone by giving it to Jostmeyer on the next four plays.
“We keep the offense so simple that they can tell me what to run,” Sachen said. “(At halftime) they said, ‘Coach, this should work, this should work, and this should work.’ And I said, ‘OK, let’s make it work. You guys get the blocks, and let’s get Dustin rolling.’”
Behind Jostmeyer and the offensive line, IHS chewed six minutes off the clock to get the ball in position for Leintz’ game-winning, rollout TD pass. Even after the game, though, Thomas was still on the minds of the players on both sides, and Boisson dedicated a prayer to him after the game among the Raider partisans. At that time Sachen announced that Thomas was expected to be OK.
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