

Kevin Gleason: Kaffenberger's key catch keys M-W comeback

MIDDLETOWN — This crazy high school football game had gone back and forth, forth and back, anybody's game deep into the crisp, comfortable night Saturday at Middletown High. At stake was the highest local honor in the sport, a sectional title and trip to the state tournament.

Monroe-Woodbury and Newburgh Free Academy. Newburgh Free Academy and Monroe-Woodbury. Proud rivals and perennial powers. Back and forth, forth and back they went, until Newburgh finally, seemingly, tucked a good chunk of the sectional plaque in its hip pocket.

Monroe-Woodbury had stopped the Goldbacks a grand total of once all game, on Rob Kelly's sack/forced fumble on their opening drive, and now Newburgh led by two with a first-and-goal at the 10 inside of 6:00 left. Newburgh receivers had the ball go off their hands in the end zone on third and fourth down, the latter from the 8 after coach Bill Bianco passed on a field-goal try, and Monroe-Woodbury had life.

The Monroe-Woodbury Crusaders had the ball and 4:14 left from their own 8.

"I was just focused,'' Monroe-Woodbury receiver Jesse Kaffenberger said. "I didn't feel anything."

By "anything," he meant nerves. So as Monroe-Woodbury quarterback Kevin Carr slung a deep ball toward Kaffenberger on second-and-nine from its 22, one thought resonated inside Kaffenberger. "I have to make this catch."

The pass started sliding closer and closer to the Newburgh sideline. Another rotation of the football and it probably would fall harmlessly out of bounds, too far from Kaffenberger's reach, another play closer to Newburgh's trip to the state tournament. The ball came down in time and Kaffenberger extended his arms as long as they would go, grabbed the football from the crisp night and somehow managed to keep both feet inbounds.

"The same situation happened at Warwick," Kaffenberger said of a similar catch during a regular-season game. He couldn't jump because he would have landed out of bounds. He could only extend those arms as long as they could go.

"I just knew I had to make that catch,'' the junior said.

Kaffenberger made the catch for 33 yards to Newburgh's 45, still 3:17 left, and Monroe-Woodbury exhaled. Kaffenberger's battery mate took over from there, with Carr running five times for 36 yards to set up Matt Paul's 26-yard field goal with 1:22 left. Teammate Austin Cain clinched it with an interception near midfield and somehow, some way, Monroe-Woodbury was on its way to the Class AA state-tourney dance with a 31-30 win.

There wasn't a lot that could be said on the Newburgh side. Bianco told his kids he was proud of them. The Goldbacks walked across the field toward the locker room and into the offseason.

"We were a play or two from winning,'' Bianco said. "We played the game tough. They are a good team, too.''

Carr was superb, every bit deserving as the game's most valuable player on offense. Kaffenberger, though, might have saved the game. He finished up his post-game interviews and walked through a gauntlet of Monroe-Woodbury cheerleaders waiting near the exit. They yelled his name and he smiled into the crisp, comfortable night, on his way to the state tournament.;

Twitter: @th_KevinGleason

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