ORLANDO, Fla. - Carlos Gaston and his
Lincoln (Tallahassee) teammates ignored all the week-long chatter about how nationally ranked
Armwood (Seffner) was going to win the Class 4A state title. Gaston also ignored the drama of a pressure-packed kick with the game and state championship on the line Saturday afternoon at the Florida Citrus Bowl.
Gaston booted a 37-yard field goal with 4 seconds remaining to give Lincoln (11-4) a 17-14 upset victory over Armwood (14-1) and hand the Trojans their first state championship since 2001 and third in the program's history. Gaston's game-winning kick atoned for a 45-yard attempt that he missed wide left late in the first half. Gaston said after the game that his teammates have him encouragement during halftime.
"They talked to me and told me to keep my head up, that they'd need me later," said Gaston, a senior who had made 7-of-11 field-goal attempts before the championship game, but none with as much at stake as the game-winner he drilled through the middle of the uprights Saturday on a cool, wet day. "I was just focusing on my fundamentals. I knew I could make it. It feels fantastic. We didn't care that they were nationally ranked and all that."
The outcome was a reversal of Armwood's dramatic 22-20 win last week against then-nationally ranked Dwyer (Palm Beach Gardens) when the Hawks, ranked No. 6 in the MaxPreps Xcellent 25, won that semifinal matchup on a field goal as time expired.
Following Gaston's kick, Armwood's Alvin Bailey made a fair catch of the ensuing kickoff at the 5-yard line to set up a final razzle-dazzle play that fizzled at the Armwood 31 and included a completed pass, three laterals and a couple of fumbles before Lincoln stopped the play with no time remaining. That sparked a wild celebration on the Lincoln sideline as the Trojans tossed their helmets in the air and crazily ran onto the field as Armwood players fell to the turf in stunned disbelief.
"They're going to remember this for a lifetime," Lincoln coach Yusuf Shakir, a 1996 Lincoln grad, said of his players, who overcame a 3-4 start this season en route to claiming the Class 4A championship trophy. "This is unbelievable. The kids knew nobody expected us to win. Some people were saying we were going to get shut out. We didn't let the outside stuff affect us. This just makes me feel so great. This is for all the former coaches and players and everyone at Lincoln."
Armwood, which won back-to-back state titles in 2003-04, had more than twice as many total yards (268-121) as Lincoln, but special teams played a key role in the Trojans pulling off the upset. Lincoln, which finished with only 4 yards net rushing, scored the game's first touchdown when Javorius Allen scooped up a blocked field-goal attempt by Armwood and sprinted 45 yards for a touchdown to give the Trojans a 7-0 lead five minutes into the second quarter.
Armwood answered that score with a 60-yard scoring drive, culminated by a 4-yard touchdown run by Matt Jones to tie the game at halftime. Jones gave Armwood its first lead of the game when he scored on a 79-yard run early in the third quarter, but Lincoln tied the game again on a 1-yard touchdown run by Ronald Butler with 9:13 remaining in the contest to set the stage for the game-winning drive that was kept alive by a roughing-the-punter penalty against Armwood.
Jones rushed for a game-high 154 yards on 19 carries and also caught three passes for 51 yards. He said after the game that the emotional, drama-packed win against Dwyer last week did not cause the Hawks to be flat for the championship game.
"We didn't take (Lincoln) lightly. We knew they came to play," said Jones, a 6-foot-3, 210-pound junior who will be one of the state's top-rated recruits next season.
Armwood coach Sean Callahan said, however, that the talk about how last week's game against Dwyer was viewed by many observers as the state championship game might have affected his team mentally in their preparation.
"That was a concern of mine, but you can't use that as an excuse," Callahan said. "We never cashed in on our opportunities. They blocked a field goal and cashed in on it."
