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LOL Rallies To Edge Zephyrhills

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By EDDIE DANIELS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2007

ZEPHYRHILLS - The ingredients seemed just right for Zephyrhills on Friday night.

Up by two points at Bulldogs Stadium, a defense that hassled both Land O' Lakes quarterbacks the entire night, a freshman controlling the Gators offense, Land O' Lakes with a fourth-and-15 and, oh, 43 seconds left on the game clock.

But when Land O' Lakes receiver Nick Castellano caught a 28-yard pass on that fourth down, while nearly prone on his back and surrounded by about three defenders, it looked as if the spell was broken.

Land O' Lakes went on to score the final touchdown of the game for a 14-9 victory.

'It's hard for me to say anything. Maybe it was a stroke of luck,' Land O' Lakes coach John Benedetto said about the final scoring pass from Stephen Weatherford to Alex Robinson. 'We just happened to have a guy that was open, and the ninth-grader found him and threw it to him.'

If only it were that simple.

Weatherford threw incompletions on the first two plays of that drive, and on third down he threw the ball at a lineman while attempting to escape the clutches of a defender. The Gators were hit with a 5-yard illegal touching penalty and loss of down.

Starting quarterback Ely Payne, playing receiver, then made the call of the game.

'We started rotating and I was at receiver and I thought eventually, the double pass is coming,' Payne said. 'Coach needed a play call and was like, 'What are we going to do?' We ran 99-99 four plays in a row, so I was like, 'Let's not do this, let's throw the double pass.''

Weatherford passed the ball to Payne on the left side, behind the line of scrimmage. Before taking a huge hit, Payne threw downfield to Castellano for the first down.

'Stevie just dropped back and Payne threw it up. It wasn't my side, but I just went up and a bunch of players went up for it and it rolled down my arm,' Castellano said.

Two plays later from the Zephyrhills 35, Weatherford hit Robinson in the end zone after he slipped behind the defenders.

Weatherford finished the game 11 of 16 for 131 yards and one score. Payne was six of 16 for 63 yards.

In the first three quarters, it appeared Zephyrhills would beat Land O' Lakes for the second time in two years.

Zephyrhills jumped to a 3-0 lead on its first possession on a 40-yard field goal by Louis Ferguson. On its third possession, which carried into the second quarter, Joey Lyman snagged a 20-yard touchdown pass from Tyler Guy for a 9-0 advantage.

The Gators managed only two first downs in the first half and didn't score until 3:53 remained in the fourth quarter on Ben Hipps' 2-yard run, making it 9-7.

Chris Henry led the Bulldogs with 22 carries for 139 yards.

'You can't blame the officials; it should have never come down to that,' Zephyrhills coach Tom Fisher said. 'We blew our chances to score and made too many mistakes on offense. We've got to correct that. We did the job good enough defensively throughout the game. It's a shame it came down to that.'

Z-Lyman 20 pass from Guy (kick failed)

L-Hipps 2 run (Spock kick)

L-A. Robinson 35 pass from Weatherford (Spock kick)

Reporter Eddie Daniels can be reached at (813) 948-4214 or edaniels@tampatrib.com.

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