By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Sometimes it works this way in football. Or more exactly, it doesn’t work.
No matter how hard you try, no matter how many opportunities come your way, no matter how much you want to beat that other team from right across Taylor’s Creek barely a couple of football fields away, almost nothing comes easy.
Or hard. Nothing – well, not much — comes either way.
Not on offense. Not for either homestanding Newport on Senior Night, or visiting Bellevue, in a key Class 1A district seeding game Friday where there were more penalties than pass completions in Newport’s 6-0 win in front of a fired-up and evenly split crowd.
By our count, there were 19 flags – with each team losing a long touchdown to a penalty.
But Newport got the one long touchdown that mattered. The lone touchdown. And did so on the Wildcats’ very first play. And did so on a pass, something they seldom do, averaging just 14.5 passes and less than 89 yards a game in the air with just five touchdowns throwing coming into the game.
So when new quarterback Jaden Conley (11 of 18 for 151 yards and a TD) fired a quick screen left to Carvonta Roper with Roper’s speed getting him down the sideline past the pursuing Bellevue defenders for a score with 8:03 left in the first, who’d have guessed that would be it. The run for the extra points failed as did every other single scoring attempt the final 40 minutes.
“We had our opportunities,” said first-year Bellevue coach Chad Montgomery as Tiger assistant coaches tried to pick up their down-in-the-dumps guys on what he admitted became “a chippy game” at the end with both teams unhappy with themselves – and the team they were playing.
Newport coach Paul Wiggins, in his second season at his alma mater after coming over from Bishop Brossart, had this message for his team: “You guys don’t have the confidence in yourselves that your coaches have in you . . . tune out the white noise.”
There will be lots of noise about this game where neither team was able to take advantage of turnovers deep in the other’s territory, like when Newport fired a long snap over punter Rivaldo Chun Perez’ head and it was Bellevue’s ball at the Newport 22, trailing by just six points late in the third quarter.
All they needed was one score.
First play, Bellevue jumps. Move the ball back five yards. Next play, Bellevue jumps again. Minus five more. The Tigers lose three on the next play, then an incompletion. And then a delay of game. It’s now third-and-28 at the 40 after starting at the 22.
And there goes Bellevue quarterback Stephen Specht back to throw as he retreats farther and farther, then scrambles around, heads up field, traveling more than 50 yards in the process for well over 10 seconds before unloading a bomb as he gets to the line of scrimmage to a wide-open Tiger receiver all alone way behind a Newport defense focused on stopping the scrambling Specht.
But as the Bellevue sideline flies down the field celebrating a potential go-ahead scoring opportunity, the Newport defenders stay put. They realize that not one, not two, but three flags have been thrown – with both teams guilty. And this one’s coming back.
And for the rest of the game, Bellevue (5-3, 1-1) will get no closer than the 33-yard line of a Newport team now 4-4 (1-1) in the district with a win over Dayton next week clinching second-place in the district and a first-round home playoff game.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my good friend Jesse Herbst and their new stadium,” Wiggins said of a four-team district with three of the original schools neighbors on the Ohio River and all four – including Newport Central Catholic with a stadium under construction – boasting new football facilities from Newport’s new stadium to the refurbished Gilligan Stadium for Bellevue.
And three of the four can boast of state championships with only Newport, having dropped down from Class 3A at one time getting as far as the semifinals when Wiggins played here. Kind of puts the lie, he says, to that “North Campbell County High” talk for consolidating the three public schools – Newport, Bellevue and Dayton.
And even though the Tigers put up just 104 yards of offense (76 rushing, 28 passing), they managed to hold Newport to that one score and 243 yards of offense. The workhorse for Newport was tailback Kendall Buck-Barber with 92 yards on 16 carries.
“Keep your heads up and your mouth shut,” Montgomery told his team as they exited. “We’re better than that,” he said of both the final score and the end-game scuffle as Newport tried to kill the ball on kneel-downs.
Wiggins said his staff thought “the screens would be there with our speed,” and that with former quarterback Kayveion Sharp injuring his arm and moving to wide receiver and free safety, “we kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul.”
But the senior Sharp did the robbing in this one with five catches for 42 yards on offense and a key drive-stopping interception as Bellevue drove to the Newport 16 with 2:29 left in the first half.
“We have our ups and downs,” Sharp said of a Newport team trying to find itself for the playoffs. “But this is a good atmosphere here at Newport. I love our fans.”
SCORING SUMMARY
Bellevue 0 0 0 0—0
Newport 6 0 0 0—6
Newport: Roper 47 pass from Conley (PAT run fails)
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.