ROCKPORT — Hollis Schwalm couldn’t believe any of it.
The Camden Hills junior quarterback couldn’t believe Friday’s final score, his individual stat line or the fact that a neon-clad student section rushed the field to celebrate the Windjammers remaining undefeated with a 36-30 comeback victory over Mt. Ararat.
Schwalm did, however, always believe in his team.
“I just told them, ‘Listen boys, we can win this, we can score 24 points easily,'” Schwalm said. “And that’s exactly what we did. They didn’t quit, and I’m so proud of them for that.”
Senior running back Dash Farrell rang up three touchdowns to give visiting Mt. Ararat (4-1) a 24-0 lead early in the second quarter, but Camden Hills (5-0) did not roll over and scored 22 points unanswered points before halftime.
Schwalm completed 10 of his 17 throws for 315 yards, five touchdowns and an interception, while adding 65 yards on the ground. He connected with senior running back Isaac Dutille six times for 215 yards and three touchdowns, including a 37-yarder that gave Camden Hills a 36-30 lead with 6:22 remaining in the fourth quarter.
Mt. Ararat’s final drive began around midfield. Farrell (35 rush, 254 yards, 2 TD; 1 rec, 67 yards, TD) led the Eagles to the Windjammers’ 6-yard-line, but a fumble on a handoff exchange was recovered by Camden Hills’ Justin Batty to seal the deal.
“Best feeling of my life,” Batty, a junior cornerback, said. “Seeing that ball on the ground, picking it right up, sitting on it, holding it up, everyone seeing, everyone cheering — best thing ever.”
The turnover was Mt. Ararat’s second of the night, but third fumble overall. A Windjammers fumble recovery earlier in the fourth quarter gave the them favorable field position, and three plays later, a wide-open Dutille scored the go-ahead touchdown after Schwalm recovered a bobbled snap and avoided losing yards by evading multiple tackles before throwing the ball.
“Momentum switched over to them, and we really couldn’t get it back,” Mt. Ararat head coach Frank True said. “As much as we tried — I’m not blaming it on that, they’re a good football team — but we’re putting the ball on the ground, mental mistakes in our blocking scheme, mental mistakes on our coverage. It’s just stuff that we don’t normally do, we did.”
Dutille believes the momentum shifted when he snagged a short pass out of the backfield with one hand and then took it 55 yards up the field for Camden Hills’ first score of the game.
“That felt like a game changer, right there,” he said. “Like, we are just going to keep rolling after this.”
The Windjammers scored on their next two drives of the half, a 3-yard pass to Braden Beveridge and a 34-yard pass to Dutille, bringing the score to 24-22. Camden Hills started the second half with the ball and brought it all the way to the Mt. Ararat 9-yard line, before being stopped on fourth down.
The Eagles then embarked on a 91-yard drive lasting the rest of the third quarter and bit of the fourth, before junior running back Nick Doughty (14 rush, 97 yards, TD) capped it off with a 2-yard score. The series lasted 20 plays and took 10 minutes and 42 seconds off the clock.
A little more than a minute of game time later, Schwalm found Beveridge for his second touchdown of the evening, a 20-yard prayer that should have been batted down in the backfield and at the point of catch.
“We’ll go with momentum, and we’ll give the coaches some credit (too) because they did make some adjustments,” Camden Hills head coach Chris Christie said. “This team just doesn’t give up. They fight. They fight for every play and they know we can score quickly if we need to. But man, that was a football game.”
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