When Isaiah Kilby-Sharp ripped the ball out of a Randolph Macon Academy running back’s hands and nearly vaulted into the end zone, it looked like St. Anne’s-Belfield was ready to put the game away.
But Randolph Macon made the most of the final three minutes, scoring 15 points to surge past STAB for a 41-35 victory.
“You win (high school games) with three things, when you block, you tackle and you don’t turn the ball over,” said STAB head coach John Blake. “In the fourth quarter, we didn’t block, we didn’t tackle and we turned the ball over, onsides kick, things like that. We did some great things but it wasn’t enough, they beat us.”
On the flip side, it was a huge win for the Yellow Jackets, who missed out on the playoffs last season, to upend last year’s VISAA Division II state finalists.
“Any time you play a team like STAB it’s just two great schools getting together, I thought it was a great night for high school football,” said Randolph Macon coach Frank Sullivan. “Both teams competed really hard, both teams made a lot of mistakes.”
Despite falling into the nine-point hole after turning the ball over to set up a Jaylen Alexander touchdown that immediately followed Kilby-Sharp’s recovery, the Yellow Jackets refused to go away. They scored on a 56-yard catch and run Alexander Ndongo-Seh from Corban Ruch with 1:44 to play. That set the stage for an onsides kick.
The Yellow Jackets went offsides on the first attempt, then got a lucky bounce when STAB tried to recover and RMA was back in business with less than a minute and a half to play. A couple of plays later, Ndongo-Seh broke through again, racing 41 yards this time for the touchdown.
“The onsides kick was huge,” Sullivan said. “We just keep trying to stress to them, play the next play, do better on the next homework, attack the next test, getting ready for life.”
Ndongo-Seh finished with eight catches for 177 yards and three touchdowns to ignite the Yellow Jackets. Jeff Collins got the job done on the ground for RMA, rushing for 174 yards and a touchdown on 24 touches. Ruch threw for 243 yards and three touchdowns, with the bulk of it going to Ndongo-Seh.
After a two-point conversion, STAB was now in the hole, 41-35. The Saints quickly crossed midfield with a catch from Myles Ward doing the bulk of the heavy lifting but with time running out, the drive stalled, setting up a fourth down just outside the red zone. A long heave fell incomplete near the front of the end zone, ending the Saints’ hopes.
“It all started in the first half, we turned the ball over and we didn’t really recover from that,” Blake said. “We played a great third quarter and came back in the fourth and didn’t have it.”
The late explosion by RMA offset Jaylen Alexander’s 189-yard rushing effort on 29 carries for the Saints as well as Thomas Harry’s 201-yard performance through the air.
STAB fell into a 13-0 hole in the second quarter and clawed back ahead early in the third quarter, taking a 15-13 lead with nine minutes left in the third quarter. The Saints held on to that lead from there until Ndongo-Seh scored with 1:17 to play.
The Saints (1-1) will try and bounce back against St. Christopher’s in Richmond Saturday at 1 p.m.
