Day 2 Tier 2 Boys HS Nationals: Last-Second Finishes
Day 2 Tier 2 Boys HS Nationals: Last-Second Finishes
The Boys HS Nationals Tier II joined the trend and brought a slew of tight games on Day Two.
Everyone seems to have learned the lesson that if you have even just a decent kicker, you take points when they are on offer.
Understanding that and when it’s the right time to line up a penalty was in evidence in the first games of the day.
Consolation Games
In a back-and-forth all-Indiana meeting Pendleton found their groove to win 22-10 over Bishop Dwenger. Meanwhile, the Raleigh Redhawks held off a Charlotte Tigers team that refused to be written off 26-19.
Semifinals
Thunder Rugby and Vienna played a wild one. There were some strangle penalties and leads won and lost. Vienna spent a lot of time in the Thunder 22 when they had the wind. Down 12-5 Vienna finally was able to run a pretty snappy play off a scrum to close it to 12-10 at halftime.
Thunder had the wind after that and with prop Wayne Ager and Ethan Sherman at hooker charging through traffic they managed to get close. Finally Sherman scored on a break, but as he was scoring the Vienna tacklers were penalized.
Penalty try, yellow card, and a penalty for Thunder at midfield.
Somehow Vienna held on after that and then worked down the field to score, with Dyland Liskey and Christos Kalpaxis leading the way. They went over at the left corner to make it 19-15, and then as time wound down back came Vienna to put Kalpaxis over and Vienna led 20-19.
Thunder had one more shot. They got down into Vienna territory, the referee pinged Vienna for offside, and flyhalf Solomon Williams wisely pointed to the posts, slotted the goal, and won the game 22-20.
Vienna was gutted, and Thunder jubilant as they looked to the Tier II final.
Who would they play? Royal Irish was looking for a rematch of last year’s HS Club opener, but they needed to get around their in-state rivals Penn.
It was a thrilling clash between a quick, relatively small Royal Irish team and a powerful Penn side with power, but also the ability to burn you out wide.
The teams were tied throughout the game, including at 17-17, 22-22, and 29-29. With Wally Kennach once again playing a huge game, and with Saeed Kiruu elusive and a threat to break it open, Penn wouldn’t go away. Caden Riffle, sometimes a prop but more often a flanker was put back into the front row—Penn coaches hoped that any issues in the scrum would be mitigated by his speed around the field.
As it turned out, the scrum was the thing. With time essentially up, Royal Irish, up 29-22, had a scrum in their own 22. To have any shot, Penn needed to shove Royal Irish back and steal that put-in. They did. Then they worked it down to the tryline. The players bunched in the middle so Penn went wide and scored in the corner.
Kiruu then slotted the very difficult kick against the wind—even that description fails to illustrate how difficult that kick was, and we would go to overtime tied 29-29.
In the overtime, neither team was able to get over the line, and in the closing moments, it was Kiruu again who was the hero, slotting a penalty to win the game.
It was drama upon drama, and fitting in that over the many years of their rivalry, Penn and Royal Irish have an average winning margin of … three points.
