St. Paul rallies past Calvert

Over time, most every football team goes through the gamut of emotions like Friday's St. Paul-Calvert football game.In a wild game, it was the visiting Flyers stunning the Senecas with 16 points over the final nine-plus minutes, capped by a 27-yard field goal with three seconds left by Nate Griffin in the 22-20 win at Heidelberg University.Calvert had taken the 20-6 lead on a 50-yard touchdown pass from Charlie Palm to Logan DeMoss on the first play of the fourth quarter. But from there, the Senecas were unable to stop the Flyers' momentum."You have to be able to make plays down the stretch, and we had a couple there to get ourselves in position to be better, and it just didn't go our way tonight," Calvert head coach Mike Lento said. "We will continue to coach these guys hard and they will pick each other up."We will look at some things and reflect. But yeah, no one wants to be on this end of a loss. If you coach long enough, you'll win some of these and lose some as well. We'll see if we could have done something different, but in the end, we just have to make some plays."Calvert trailed 6-0 late in the first half after it fumbled at its own 26-yard line. The next play, freshman Casey Fries covered that distance at the 5:17 mark of the opening quarter. Nate Griffin's PAT never got off the ground for the 6-0 lead.St. Paul appeared to be marching toward a double-digit lead when the Senecas forced a fumble at their own 5 with 4:41 left in the first half.The Senecas (1-2) then put together an impressive 13-play, 95-yard scoring drive that took 4:11 off the clock. Quarterback Charlie Palm was 5-of-7 passing for 67 yards on the drive, the biggest coming when he found DeMoss for 39 yards to the St. Paul 4.Nolan Lee scored from the 2 and Cameron Lucius made the PAT for a 7-6 lead with 30 seconds left in the half."We saw some things we liked there, and our guys executed," Lento said.Both teams then traded possessions to start the second half, then Palm capped a 50-yard drive with a 4-yard run with four minutes left in the third. Lucius extended the lead to 14-6.After forcing the Flyers to punt, the Senecas then got the long TD from Palm to DeMoss for the 20-6 lead.But St. Paul returned the ensuing kickoff 50 yards to the Calvert 46 and were right back in business.Seven plays later, quarterback Grant Kuhnle found Connor Lindenberger for a 13-yard TD pass in the right corner of the end zone on a third-down play. Griffin's PAT was good to cut the lead to 20-13 with 9:02 remaining.Then the game got even more off the rails.After the Senecas punted, the Flyers were driving in the red zone looking for the potential game-tying score. But Calvert's Alijah LeMasters intercepted a pass at the Calvert 10 to stop the threat with four minutes left. However, three plays later, St. Paul's Levi Rospert intercepted the ball right back and took it to the Calvert 15.This time, the Flyers needed just two plays. A nine-yard run by Pocos set up a 6-yard TD by Landon Fries with 2:09 left. However, a low kick by Griffin was blocked, and it looked like the Senecas may escape.After the Senecas recovered the onside kick, the Flyers forced a three-and-out. But Calvert had a fake punt attempt, and St. Paul freshman Casey Fries leveled Calvert punter Lukas Stultz, leaving both players slow to get up.With the ball back at midfield and 1:41 left in the game, the Flyers went to work. Faced with a fourth-and-10 from the Calvert 37, Kuhnle found Landon Fries for a huge 15-yard gain with under 40 seconds left.Two plays later, Kuhnle and Landon Fries connected again for 12 yards.Head coach Chris Doughty then sent out Griffin for a 27-yard field goal with eight seconds remaining. Unlike the extra point attempts, the snap and hold were executed, and Griffin drilled the kick with three seconds left to secure the win."We have to close the game out, and we have to see what we can do about that as coaches to get our guys better," Lento said.