Wood, Hillsboro-Deering football took a long, winding path to first championship

LACONIA - When Jay Wood first moved to Contoocook in 1999, the lack of a football program in the area struck him.

When he was hired as Hillsboro-Deering High School’s athletic director in 2007 he proposed the idea of starting one.

Seven years later, the H-D/Hopkinton Redhawks cooperative team started, and last season was Hillsboro-Deering’s first year as a standalone program.

This year, the Hillcats are Division IV champions.

It took 18 years of hard work and dedication, but now Wood, Hillsboro-Deering’s coach, and his squad have a new banner to hang in the HDHS gymnasium. The No. 1 Hillcats capped the season with a 34-20 victory over the defending D4 champions, No. 2 Mascoma, scoring 28 unanswered points in Saturday’s championship game in Laconia.

“This is only the 12th year of football in the community," Wood said. “And it wasn’t easy to get in. But you know what? Now there’s going to be a banner in that gym that they can never forget about. That’s going to be sitting on that wall. I told those kids ‘You’re going to have a legacy for generations to come.’”

It’s the first team championship that Hillsboro-Deering has won in any team sport since the girls soccer team won the Class M championship in 1995.

“I was told by someone, ‘Jay, there will never be football here. This is a soccer town,’” Wood said. “This is a biggie for the community. Now we’ve got something to hang on the wall they can hang their hat on.”

But seeing the bleachers at Laconia’s Bank of NH Stadium jam packed with Hillcats red says otherwise.

The community has come together around this program, although that’s a new phenomenon. In the decade that the Redhawks cooperative program existed, home games were played in Hopkinton behind the town library. No football games were played on the HDHS campus until the Hillcats became a solo program in 2024.

Not only that, there’s no youth football in town. Kids who live in Hillsboro or Deering have the option to play for the John Stark Junior Generals or the Kearsarge Wildcats, but the majority of Hillsboro-Deering roster never played before high school, according to Wood.

Robert King, one of five senior captains and the team’s leading running back, finished the game with 208 rushing yards on 22 carries and a pair of touchdowns, including a 52-yard score to give the Hillcats the lead with nine minutes left in the game. He only played one season of football before high school, playing for the Kearsarge Wildcats in eighth grade.

Dan Richard, a senior fullback, also scored a pair of touchdowns, rushing for 81 yards on 13 carries. He had only played three years of football for the Hillcats.

“There’s a lot of teaching,” Wood said. “I’ve got four seniors who just contributed immensely, who had never played a game in their life. They just learned this year.”

Among those players is senior tight end Chase Owen. Owen caught a 10-yard pass from senior quarterback Joshua Perron on the last play of the third quarter to bring Hillsboro-Deering within one point of Mascoma, 20-19.

The Hillcats set up for a 26-yard field goal attempt, only for Perron, the holder, to step back to pass to a wide open Owen.

That play was only possible because the Hillcats have Gavin Ford as their kicker. Ford is captain of the golf team and had never played football until this year, but practiced with the team once a week. Having someone who could reliably kick field goals from that distance, connect on extra points, and get touchbacks on nearly every kickoff, was crucial for Hillsboro-Deering in Saturday’s comeback victory and throughout the season.

This year’s team also had the right mix of talent and leadership. Ten of the 27 players listed on the roster were seniors. Five of those are the captains: King, Perron, Ethan Franklin (receiver/safety), Jake Iadonisi (guard/linebacker) and Leo Vassar (defensive lineman). Junior guard/defensive end William Martin also served as a captain.

That leadership was needed at halftime.

The Royals scored touchdowns on all of their first three drives to go up 20-6 with 11:22 left in the second quarter. The Hillcats stopped them a couple of times before halftime and Richard’s first touchdown brought Hillsboro-Deering back to 20-13 before the break, but the players were still feeling a little dejected.

Mascoma’s line had a size advantage on the Hillcats and Hillsboro-Deering wasn't able to compete physically the way the team had been able to in previous games.

“Talk at halftime was that you’ve gotta believe in yourself,” Wood said. “Some of the kids were a little down. ‘I can’t take him on. He’s too big, he’s too fast.’ And (the response) was, ‘No, we’re not talking like that. Get yourself together and let’s get ready to play some football.’”

With the support of their fans, that’s what the Hillcats did. Hillsboro-Deering held the ball for the entire third quarter, ending with Owen’s TD reception, and King’s 52-yard scamper gave the Hillcats the lead.

“We were getting down on each other (in the first half), but we stayed in it,” King said. “We stayed in it. We stayed on the life raft, we stayed above water. It was a team effort. Amazing team effort. For us to be able to come out of that, shows exactly who we are as a team.”

When junior Micah Adams picked off Mascoma quarterback Justin Fletcher with 5:38 left in the game and Richard scored from 23 yards out to give Hillsboro-Deering a two-score lead with 3:43 remaining, the fan section became more raucous.

When the Hillcats secondary forced Mascoma to turn the ball over on downs and Hillsboro-Deering went into victory formation with 1:54 left, it crescendoed.

“Athletic director, principal, vice principal, teachers talking about us all week, and hyping us up. How can you not go out and win for them?” King said. “They do so much for you in school and out of school, we wanted to do something for them.

“To be out here with my friends who I’ve been working with for four years, it’s everything. When you’re going into a game with the mentality that you’re putting everything on the line, it’s a different ballgame and we capitalized on that.”

For Wood, it was the culmination of nearly two decades of work and over a decade of coaching.

“The kids flourished,” Wood said. “Things came full circle.”