Fourth-quarter adjustments gave Campbell football boost it needed to beat Monadnock

The Campbell High School football team had to do something different if it was going to come back to beat Monadnock in Saturday's Division III championship game.

Going into the fourth quarter, the Cougars had averaged a little more than one yard per carry and had gained just 85 yards on offense.

That included a combined total of 27 yards between running backs Keegan Mills and Ryan Yanuszewski, both of whom rushed for over a thousand yards during the regular season.

"We weren’t able to get the edge running our normal single wing stuff," Campbell coach Greg Gush said. "They’ve got some pretty good athletes. We spread them out, got guys outside of the box and got some perimeter blocking and took care of it."

Campbell came out for its first possession of the fourth quarter in a spread formation, with Mills lined up as the quarterback. The change in alignment was just enough to allow the Cougars to find some more running room, but the drive almost ended before it got going.

A false start on second down pushed Campbell back and Mills ran for a loss of 2 yards to make it third-and-17 from the Cougars' 25-yard line. But Mills was able to find Carter Vedrani for a 19-yard gain to the 44 and a first down.

Two rushes by Mills picked up another 23 yards to get Campbell to the Monadnock 33 - the only time in the second half the Cougars crossed midfield - and the Huskies called a timeout with 6:47 left in the game.

In the timeout, Mills had a good feeling about what the Cougars were about to do.

"I said run the same play, they’re not going to expect it," the sophomore said. "They’re going to expect us to run the bubble or something. The line just did a great job blocking. Carter did a great job blocking that defensive end. All I had to do was beat the safety and I stiff armed him and kept going."

Mills went all the way for a 33-yard touchdown with 6:39 to go in the game, giving Campbell a 12-8 lead that it would hold on to, despite Monadnock answering with a drive to the Cougars' 18-yard line. But on fourth down, Tim Santaw's pass to Joe Morrell sailed out of the back of the end zone, giving Campbell the ball back with 46 seconds left in the game.

"We knew it was going to be a dogfight," Mills said. "We were thinking this is going to be a close game. Our goal was to get to the fourth quarter and we’d finish in the fourth quarter. That’s exactly what we did."

The sophomore led Campbell with 76 yards rushing and two touchdowns and was also 3 of 4 passing for 35 yards, while making 18 tackles on defense.

"The kid is a machine," Gush said. "He easily leads our team in tackles. No one runs like him. He’s such a punishing runner and he’s got great vision. On both sides of the ball, he’s a game-changer. Tough kid, good football player, he’s calm, he doesn’t get worked up over anything. He’s a football player. He comes to work, he’s not showy."

The title is Campbell's second in four years and its the first time the Cougars (11-0) have finished a season undefeated, and before Saturday, they had dominated in every game all season, averaging 52 points per game while allowing just 4.4.

"This season, it was great," Mills said. "Coming into this game, we wanted to play a whole football game. We just want to have a great football game and end up winning in the end. It was great that we were winning football games, but we didn’t get to play all four quarters. It was a great experience."