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Stanton, Baldwin rescue Salem

KEENE, N.H. — From the opening snap, Jack Gati and his staff implored his pass rushers to put up their hands and get them in the quarterback’s face.

The pleas and the attack proved fruitless, that is until Keene High’s final play — the deciding two-point conversion pass attempt with 42 seconds to play.

Salem senior Mitch Baldwin heeded the advice and nicked Tanner Luopa’s last-minute pass just enough for Matt Stanton to pluck the ball out of the air, preserving a hard-fought 15-14 win for the Blue Devils yesterday.

“He learned a lot today,” said Gati of the senior Baldwin, who was making his first varsity start. “That’s what we teach our defensive linemen, even the linebacker. When they attack the quarterback, they have to do it with their hands up.”

Division 2 crossover weekend presented a hefty challenge for reloading Salem, especially with bruising backs Jermaine McDay and Evan Ayres repeatedly testing the untested defensive interior.

“That’s 500 pounds of running back, and we’re not that big up front,” noted Gati.

Keene dominated the yardage battle, 365-159. But as Blackbird coach John Luopa shouted to his team in a timeout, Salem owned both ends of the field, from the 30 in. The Blue Devils turned Keene away three times and cashed in for TDs on their only two times in the red zone.

“In practice, we’re told you can’t quit, you can’t quit,” said linebacker and co-captain Jharid Pratt, who had a team-high 13 tackles. “On third-and-one, fourth-and-one, on goal line, you have to stick in there, give it a nice pop, and it worked for us.

“That’s definitely a big backfield, one of the biggest I’ve seen. But we matured today. Even if it’s just one game, we matured today.”

Offensively, Salem rode its own big horse, 5-foot-11, 200-pound senior Chris Najem (12 carries, 95 yards) for a pair of short TD plunges, a first-quarter 2-yard dive and a 1-yard roll over right tackle with seven minutes left in the game.

“I knew we had to step it up, the team was down a little bit, and we needed intensity,” said Najem, who broke off runs of 14 and 45 yards on the fourth quarter drive. “I just decided to put my shoulder down and run a little bit harder.”

Each score was set up by a long Matt Cannone to Cory Lavallee connection, one for 35 yards and the second for 22 yards.

The sophomore was 4 of 8 for 79 yards with no interceptions despite being under some heavy pressure.

His biggest throw of the afternoon, though, won’t appear in the stats. Cannone rolled right and zipped a fastball to junior Darren Brown for the pivotal two-point conversion in the fourth.

“Experience is the greatest teacher, and all these guys needed experience,” said Gati. “I have two players who were two-way starters last year, and everyone else is basically a first-year starter. This is something they needed to do, and to do it with a win makes it that much more enjoyable.”

It also made the nearly two-hour commute home much more enjoyable for Salem, which opens Division 1 play at Londonderry Friday night.