‘I knew I could hit it.’ Winning field goal caps thrilling comeback in rivalry game.
The kick was “routine.”
The situation was anything but.
Minutes after having a potential go-ahead extra point blocked, Lexington Christian’s Andrew Dobbs nailed a 37-yard field goal as time ran out to help the Eagles capture a stunning come-from-behind 23-20 road victory over Lexington Catholic. The Eagles trailed by 13 points in the fourth quarter.
“I knew it was just a routine kick. We practice it in practice all the time, and I knew I could hit it,” said Dobbs, who also plays for LCA’s soccer team but hopes to become a college football kicker. “Once I saw it go through the uprights, I just started jumping up and down.”
With time winding down and the game tied, LCA Coach Doug Charles went for it on fourth-and-2 with a short pass play to help get Dobbs a little closer for the attempt, which came against a steady wind. LCA had two seconds on the clock for the kick. Charles didn’t have any doubts in his team or his kicker.
“He’s as good a clutch kicker as you’re going to find,” Charles said. “He does it every single day in practice like it’s a walk in the park. Eighty-five percent of (his) 45-yarders are in from any hash, anywhere. We wanted to get him a little bit closer, and we had those timeouts so we could get him a little closer.”
For most of the game, it didn’t look like the Eagles would be the ones celebrating. A pair of failed fourth-down conversions by LCA in the first half set Lexington Catholic up with short fields and the Knights capitalized.
LexCath junior quarterback Jack Gohmann, the team’s first new starting signal-caller in more than three years after Beau Allen’s matriculation to Kentucky, scrambled for a 31-yard TD to open the scoring midway through the first quarter and later hit Blake Busson on a 36-yard fly pattern into the corner of the end zone to put the Knights up 17-7 before halftime.
Knights kicker Max DeGraff hit a pair of field goals. The last, from about 22 yards out, staked LexCath to a 20-7 lead with 9:22 to play in the fourth quarter.
“My kids always play 48 minutes,” LCA’s Charles said. “When we held them to a field goal (in the fourth quarter) I told them, ‘Guys that’s two scores.’ We do it every year. It’s good.”
Charles lamented that the Eagles didn’t seem to click in the first half despite a 74-yard TD connection from quarterback Drew Nieves to Xavier Brown in the second quarter that helped keep them in the game.
“But I felt like our kids picked up some energy. Momentum started to switch in the third quarter,” Charles said. “We got a stop. … Our guys just kept playing.”
Right after DeGraff’s final field goal, Nieves connected with Brown again, this time on an 80-yard bomb down the sideline to cut LexCath’s edge to 20-14 with 9:06 to play.
Nieves went 20 of 31 for 294 passing yards and one interception. Brown caught for 224 of those yards.
Even after a failed onside kick and another failed fourth-down conversion late in the fourth, LCA kept coming.
A LexCath fumble after a catch gave LCA the ball again near midfield with 3:27 left. One minute later, Brown caught his third TD coming back to the ball and barely staying inbounds as he tumbled to the ground.
“I was looking for the ref to signal and confirm the catch, and it was good. I was psyched,” said Brown, who pumped his fists in the air when the ref’s hands went up and LCA’s socially-distanced fans let out a roar. “We didn’t have a lot of energy in the first half, but, obviously, in the second half we got the momentum on our side and we kept going.”
Lexington Catholic’s JD Woodall leapt to thwart Dobbs’ go-ahead extra-point attempt, however, and the game remained tied 20-20 to set up the LCA kicker’s winner after the Eagles forced a punt.
Lexington Catholic and Lexington Christian have played seven times since the Eagles football program was born in 2000. Both teams consistently rank in the top 10s of their respective classes these days — LCA in Class 2A and LexCath in the larger-school Class 4A. LCA has won three of its last four against the Knights.
“It’s a rival because we’re two private schools, and we’re close by and that kind of thing,” Charles said. “But we both play in really, really talented districts, and I think it helps both of us just get ready for districts.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 1:06 AM.
