Fourth-Quarter TDs Carry Pleasantville Past Ardsley
A pair of fourth-quarter touchdown runs by Daniel Picart lifted the Pleasantville football team to a come-from-behind 24-14 victory over Ardsley in a Section 1, Class B semifinal playoff game at a chilly but filled-to-capacity Parkway Field on Friday night.
The two touchdowns by the super soph kept the Panthers undefeated this season and earned them a berth in the sectional final against Nanuet next Saturday afternoon at Arlington High School.
The Panthers, now 9-0, had found themselves trailing 14-10 as the game headed to the final quarter. But they had the ball at the Ardsley 24-yard line after a clutch third-and-15 pass completion from Michael LaCapria to Dom Matica picked up 12 yards on the last play of the third quarter.
That would be the last of the heroics from the Panthers’ senior signal-caller because Picart then took over the rest of the way in the Pleasantville wildcat offense. He carried the football on 13 successive offensive plays by the Panthers in the fourth quarter, putting them ahead to stay 90 seconds into the final period when he followed the blocking of Kieran Cotter, Joe Reich and Michael Gordon and scored from nine yards out.
The point-after kick from John McCarthy gave Pleasantville a 17-14 advantage and the Panther defense followed it up by forcing Ardsley into a three-and-out. A short punt enabled the Panthers to start another drive from their own 48-yard line with 8:43 left on the clock. With Picart taking the snaps, he kept the ball himself 10 straight times over the next four minutes as P’ville marched down the field.
His final carry was the most dazzling of the drive as he crossed the goal line from six yards out, using back-to-back spin moves to evade tacklers and give Pleasantville a 10-point cushion with time running out on the visitors. Ardsley’s last gasp came when quarterback Michael Belarge’s third-and-10 pass way down the field with three minutes remaining was intercepted by Matica, who returned the ball nearly 40 yards to the Ardsley 43.
The Panthers had defeated Ardsley by a point when they met during the regular season just three weeks earlier.
This time, with the stakes much higher, Ardsley began the game with an 11-play drive that used up nearly seven minutes but stalled at the P’ville 28-yard line.
On first down, LaCapria handed the ball to Picart, who burst into the secondary like he was shot out of a cannon, then got to the right sideline where he outran everyone all the way to the end zone for a 72-yard touchdown that put the Panthers on the scoreboard first.
Ardsley star Ryan Watson ran for an 11-yard gain to the Pleasantville 45 on the final play of the opening quarter but spent the rest of the night sidelined with a shoulder injury. The visitors moved the ball all the way to the 17-yard line, but on fourth-and-20, Belarge was flushed out of the pocket and his pass on the run toward Connor Jones was picked off by Michael Hundzynski, ending the threat.
Late in the half, Ardsley finally managed to get even following Jack Phelan’s interception of a LaCapria pass that gave it possession at the P’ville 14-yard line with 1:47 remaining. A 15-yard penalty set Ardsley back, but Belarge soon connected on a 16-yard touchdown pass to James Weber and the extra point tied the score with 1:16 to go.
That left just enough time for the Panthers to run six plays, including a 22-yard run by Cotter and a 14-yard pass from LaCapria to Aidan Picart. With three seconds remaining on the clock, McCarthy booted a 37-yard field goal that gave Pleasantville a 10-7 halftime lead.
Midway through the third quarter, Daniel Picart, who finished with 178 yards on the ground, lost the football and Ardsley recovered at the P’ville 35-yard line. On first down, Weber scampered 30 yards before he was brought down by Picart. Two plays later, Belarge ran off right tackle two yards into the end zone to give Ardsley its only lead of the night.
But Belarge’s short touchdown run just set the stage for a fourth-quarter of complete redemption for Daniel Picart, who carried the football over and over again and provided the two touchdowns that will have Pleasantville playing for a sectional championship this coming weekend.
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
Read Andy’s archived work here.
