Rosen’s Early Touchdown Propels Byram Hills Past Westlake
The Byram Hills football team got its fans on their feet just moments after Saturday’s opening kickoff with some offensive fireworks. Then the Bobcat defense took over from there.
Rebounding from a heartbreaking loss just a week earlier, the Bobcats improved their 2012 record to 2-1 with a hard-fought 10-0 victory over visiting Westlake. Senior running back Brandon Rosen scampered 57 yards for a touchdown on the game’s fourth play from scrimmage and kicker Chris Magnemi added a field goal midway through the third quarter as Byram Hills erased the bitter taste of its disappointing loss to Port Chester.
“They were really, really focused,” said Bobcats coach John Naughton about his players afterwards. “They bounced back and showed an incredible amount of character. I’m very proud of ’em.
Under an increasingly cloudy sky, the Bobcats took the opening kickoff and marched 74 yards in just four plays, getting on the scoreboard less than two and a half minutes into the contest. Rosen, who finished the day with 153 yards rushing on 15 carries, broke through the line of scrimmage and galloped up the middle of the field for his long touchdown run that gave Byram Hills all the points it would need.
Despite the electrifying run by Rosen, Naughton still figured points were going to be hard to come by the rest of the way.
“We knew it was gonna be low scoring, a physical football game, and that’s exactly what it was,” he said. “The last three or four times we’ve played them, it’s been nip and tuck like this. It’s been very low scoring, very close games. We have the utmost respect for their program. They’re tough, tough kids and we knew it was gonna be a war.”
Buoyed by Rosen’s heroics, the Bobcat defense prevented the Wildcats, who dropped to 1-2, from getting a single first down in the opening quarter and forced them to quickly punt the ball away three straight times. Westlake did recover a Byram fumble near midfield with four minutes to go in the period, but on third-and-11 the Bobcats’ Skyler Simon sacked quarterback Michael Ragusa for a big loss and the Wildcats would have to wait until the second quarter to threaten for the first time.
“Byram Hills is a good football team,” said Wildcats coach Rich Hennessy. “We knew what we were gonna get coming in and we knew it would be a struggle. We hoped we’d be a little more successful on offense, but they’re a very good team.”
The Wildcats finally started moving the ball on their first possession of the second quarter. They took over at their own 23-yard line and soon advanced all the way to the Bobcat 30 thanks to a pair of passes from Ragusa to junior tight end Anthony Rotunno. But a holding penalty on first down and then a dropped pass on third down thwarted the drive and brought another Westlake punt.
Westlake made a late bid to get on the board before halftime. Getting possession of the ball with 59 seconds left in the second quarter, the Wildcats picked up 12 yards on a Ragusa pass to Robert Tocco. Ragusa then connected with Richie Maio on a 29-yard pass play to the Bobcat 17 with 21 seconds remaining. But four incomplete passes later, the Wildcats relinquished the ball again and left the field at halftime still trailing 7-0.
“Little mistakes here and there are what cost us today,” said Hennessy. “We were moving the ball well. We were hoping we could sustain a drive, but it’s a credit to John (Naughton) and his staff. They made adjustments and stopped us.”
One of those Westlake mistakes came in the third quarter when Dan Bassi mishandled a Byram Hills punt and the Bobcats recovered the ball at the Wildcat 45-yard line. Quarterback Matt DiCristofaro immediately found Ryan Power with a pass down the left sideline for a 37-yard gain. But the drive stalled at the Westlake 12 and Magnemi came on to boot a line-drive field goal that gave the Bobcats a 10-point advantage with five minutes left in the quarter.
Another Wildcat mistake came early in the fourth quarter after they had driven all the way to the Byram 17-yard line. On fourth-and-six, quarterback Ragusa jumped in the air to deliver a pass over the middle. The ball was tipped, juggled for a while and then collected by the Bobcats’ Connor Morley, who would have been able to run 80 yards for a clinching TD had it not been for an inadvertent whistle on the play.
“It happens,” said Naughton of the ill-timed whistle. “It was just one of those freak things. The ball went and hit like three or four guys and ends up in our hands. But, you know what, I would’ve blown the whistle too. You’ve got to deal with what happens in the game and our kids were able to overcome that.”
They overcame the bad luck mostly because the Wildcats were unable to move the football in either of their last two possessions of the game. Westlake’s last gasp came with just under three minutes remaining when a fourth-and-three play at its own 27 fizzled as the snap from center was fumbled.
“We’ve had some really good games with them in the past,” said the Wildcats’ Hennessy, “and this is another one of them. The one thing I love is my guys didn’t give up. They fought till the end. High school football’s full of ups and downs. Unfortunately, we had two kids get hurt today. Adversity comes in all different shapes and sizes. I just told ’em they need to respond to this and overcome it.”
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.