JEROMESVILLE – The Falcons became mythical in what must have felt like milliseconds.
When the Hillsdale football team took the field for its Division VII Region 25 semifinal Friday against Malvern, it was looking to stay alive in the playoffs and set a single-season program record for wins.
What the Falcons instead took away from Massillon Perry’s Wakefield Stadium was a night that will live in Ohio high school football annals, as they stunned the Hornets 50-48 on a 36-yard Hail Mary pass as time expired.
Sophomore quarterback Kael Lewis rolled right, let his three receivers get deep, then lofted a pass that would decide survival for one team and deliver a devastating end to the season for the other.
The ball was tipped up by a cluster of Malvern defenders and lightly floated toward the back of the end zone. Miraculously, Hillsdale junior receiver Hayden McFadden was close enough to reach out his right hand and tap it back into his own grasp.
TIP DRILL!!! Hillsdale Hail Mary to advance to the Regional Finals!!🤯🤯 @oh_report on the call@notthefakeSVP @espn @SportsCenter pic.twitter.com/jRdYEO83Gj
— Martin RPI (@MartinRPI) November 16, 2024
The HHS sideline emptied, with nearly everyone in blue celebrating in a pile near the goal line. The Falcons survived a game that saw five lead changes and had 33 total points scored within the final six minutes.
By Monday, hundreds of thousands of viewers had watched the epic conclusion across multiple social media platforms.
Fans were reaching out to shows like SportsCenter and The Pat McAfee Show, trying to get some national airtime for the once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
“The thing that shocked me was just how many people have seen it, just how fast it can get around,” McFadden said.
“I remember for me growing up, when you’re at recess with your buddies, you like to play ‘Jackpot,’ where you just throw it up and try to high-point the football,” Hillsdale head coach Trevor Cline said. “These guys were doing it at elementary recess for years and they finally got their opportunity to execute it in a game.”
On one indefinable play, the Falcons had earned a spot in this week’s regional title game against Cuyahoga Heights and became the first area team to win three playoff games in a season since Ashland in 2007.
Within Hillsdale circles and inside the Falcon locker room, many were trying to come up with catchy names for the legendary moment.
Some called it the “Kael Mary,” cleverly using Lewis’ first name. But the one the players said has stuck best has been more of a classic: “The Miracle in Massillon.”
Birth of the Hail Mary
To know the madness of the Hail Mary, it’s good to first understand the origins of the desperation play.
According to Wikipedia, the phrase picked up steam after a 1975 NFC playoff game when the Dallas Cowboys won on their version of the Miracle at Minnesota. Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach hit receiver Drew Pearson with a game-winning score against the Vikings on a midfield heave at the end. After the game, Staubach said, “I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.”
It’s a reference to the “Hail Mary” prayer for help, but its first football reference dates back as far as the early 1920s – a full century ago.
In college football, Notre Dame was said to have made Hail Mary prayers before scoring a few touchdowns in a game against Georgia Tech in 1922.
The terminology eventually grew to define more improbable touchdowns scored by the Fighting Irish, then slowly spread to other programs before Staubach’s NFL proclamation decades later.
Last Friday night, however, Hillsdale took the Hail Mary to another level entirely.
TWO Hail Marys?
For all the insanity that came with the walk-off score at the game’s end, it might have been easy to forget that the Falcons actually completed two Hail Mary touchdown passes.
Both of them came with Hillsdale trailing, both were thrown to the right side of the end zone and both were unleashed by Lewis from the Malvern 42-yard line.
The first came before halftime and was good enough for storybook status of its own.
Hillsdale hit on 2 Hail Mary's Friday night, one at the end of the half, one at the end of the game, and needed them both to beat Malvern 50-48. https://t.co/urREdeE3yu
— Larry Phillips (@Ohiopreplegends) November 16, 2024
After the Hornets had surged ahead 20-16 on a rushing touchdown with 25 seconds left, Hillsdale moved into position to try its first miracle of the night.
With 2.5 seconds, Lewis took the snap, rolled right, got a key block from running back Owen Sloan and heaved the ball toward the front, right corner of the end zone.
Falcons senior receiver Holland Young leaped for it, but he and a defender tipped it into the air and a trailing receiver – junior Brock Bower – calmly pulled it in, tapping his toes near the pylon for the touchdown.
Bower, who entered the night with just 242 yards receiving in the first 12 games, said pulling in a catch like that almost seems to happen in slow motion.
“It’s more of a reaction on a tipped ball,” he said, “you don’t really have time to see the ball in the air and think, ‘OK, I’ve got to jump now.’ ”
“It was cool to see (Brock) get one,” Cline added. “He’s one of the best athletes on our team. He does all the little things right and he may not get as much credit as some of the other guys just because his stats aren’t as eye-popping.”
Young immediately embraced Bower in the end zone and the Falcons had a 23-20 lead heading into halftime, setting up more fireworks than anyone in the stands ever would have expected.
‘It just doesn’t happen, ever’
There were a pair of video broadcasts of the game that have gotten the lion’s share of online traffic since Friday night – featuring a pair of voices with vastly different experience on the call.
One broadcaster, Mike Breckenridge of WQKT 104.5 out of Wooster, is well-known in local circles and throughout Ohio after more than three decades of calling games for both high school and the College of Wooster.
The other, Zack Truax of the Mansfield-based OH Report, is in his very first season broadcasting football.
Both said Friday’s game was one they doubt they’ll ever experience again.
Truax could barely contain himself on his call of the walk-off Hail Mary. After all the on-field celebrating had slowed down and reality set in, he proclaimed, “I’m not gonna go to sleep until 5 in the morning! This is nuts!”
Lewis said he loved Truax’s call.
“He was just going crazy,” the quarterback said.
Truax still sounded a bit shocked Tuesday, adding that after a season in which every game he covered had featured a running clock, it was stunning to watch an instant classic unfold.
“Somehow I got the call of the year between all my stuttering and stammering and getting kids’ names wrong,” he said with a laugh. “I had some people who reached out and said, ‘Wow, your first year of broadcasting and you get one of those.’ ”
Breckenridge, meanwhile, has called area and non-area games for 35 years, including about 100 state championship contests. In total, he said he’s covered roughly 1,000 football games in his career.
Before Friday, he had only seen one completed Hail Mary in a game, coming in what he said was the best game he’s ever been on the microphone for – the 2011 Division IV state championship between Norwayne and Kenton.
The Bobcats won that day, 48-42, to capture the Wayne County Athletic League’s lone state title in football to date. Led by a Mr. Football pick at quarterback in Maty Mauk, Kenton had scored on a Hail Mary, but it came before halftime.
Breckenridge said Friday’s heroics by Hillsdale were a different thing all together.
“You could do games for 1,000 years and never have that,” said the Wayne County Sports Hall of Famer. “I don’t know anybody who has ever broadcast two Hail Marys, including one to win the ballgame at the end. It just doesn’t happen. Ever.
“The last six or eight minutes of the fourth quarter, that’s when everything took off. It was a pretty good game to that point and then everything got kind of turned over on its head and it became something really special.”
Malvern trailed by two possessions at 44-28 with just over five minutes remaining.
Unfathomably, by the time the clock showed 30.5 seconds, the Hornets had scored 20 unanswered points to forge ahead, 48-44. Star senior quarterback Jared Witherow had nearly 450 yards passing in the game.
Multiple blunders by Hillsdale on both offense and defense allowed Malvern to make the stunning turnaround, but with one timeout and 64 yards to cover, Breckenridge still said he’d seen enough to know things weren’t over quite yet.
“Hillsdale’s not done,” he said on the broadcast. “In this game, you never know.”
A pair of completions from Lewis to McFadden covered 28 yards to set up the final Hail Mary. And even in between those two plays, Lewis was almost intercepted on a deep ball with 15 seconds left.
That throw was deflected by a Malvern defender and nearly caught by McFadden for what would have been a walk-in, game-winning touchdown.
It made sense that things wouldn’t be decided until there were zeroes on the clock.
“Just knowing our type of players, you knew they were going to give you an opportunity to win that game,” Cline said. “It wasn’t one of those situations where you sent that last play out there and thought it couldn’t happen.
“Kael has the strongest arm of any quarterback who’s ever come through Hillsdale, from what I’ve seen. (We knew) if we got it close to the 40, that ball was going to end up in the end zone.”
McFadden, who has set HHS records this season for receiving yards (1,223) and receiving touchdowns (16), said everything just came together.
“I wasn’t even thinking of where I was at in the end zone when the ball was in the air,” the junior said. “I saw the ball get bounced back, I reached my hand back, (tipped it) and I looked down at my hands and I had it.
“When I watched the play over and over again that night and the next day, it reminded me of our backyard games in the summer. Sometimes it’s last-minute where we need a point and we just chuck it and hope for the best.”
Breckenridge said he went onto the field in the aftermath to congratulate Cline and former Hillsdale head coach Tom Williams (currently the team’s offensive coordinator).
He said he had never done that in his 35 years of broadcasting, but the situation warranted it.
“There are certain moments in time where things come together and stop. That was one,” Breckenridge said. “It wasn’t a playoff win, it was a dramatic, Hail Mary win. That doesn’t happen.”
Truax and Breckenridge both said they’ve had a steady stream of feedback this week through social media, calls and texts.
The full video from both of their calls is available on YouTube.
“It was a big win anyway, but the way it happened,” Breckenridge said, “that means the game has taken on another life, and it certainly has.”
Both Breckenridge and Truax will be on the call again Friday when Hillsdale takes on Cuyahoga Heights at Orrville High School.
No comparison
Truax, a 1996 graduate of Loudonville – Hillsdale’s most fierce nonconference rival – said he was having flashbacks Friday of when the Falcons beat him and the Redbirds his junior season with the help of two touchdowns on 50-50 jumpballs in the end zone.
“It’s painful, I still think about it,” he said with a laugh, noting that the loss kept LHS out of the playoffs that season.
But he said Friday was simply a finish of a completely different kind.
All of the Hillsdale coaches involved with the “Miracle in Massillon” have been trying to think of a similar situation they’ve seen in their careers as well.
None of them can.
Williams said the closest thing during his 15 years leading Hillsdale was a game-ending interception during a 28-21 overtime win against Smithville in 2015.
He collected 98 wins with the Falcons and none were like Friday.
Cline, meanwhile, recalled when he was Hillsdale’s quarterback in the 2010 playoffs, hitting wide receiver Ryan Moore on a fade route in the end zone to win a regional semifinal against Patrick Henry, 48-41. But that play was from 15 yards away and there was still a little time on the clock afterwards.
Friday’s scenario was so unheard of that it overshadowed the greatest single-game rushing performance in Falcons history from Sloan. The junior set a new school record with 287 rushing yards and scored four touchdowns on his 37 carries.
So it goes when your team has arguably the craziest finish in the history of area high school football.
Bower said the offensive line deserved a ton of credit for giving Lewis time to make the throws on both Hail Marys.
“Most people thought the game was over,” Lewis said, “but I feel like for all 11 guys on the field, there was no doubt that we were going to come down with that ball.”
Cline said he made sure to look at the referee to be certain McFadden hadn’t stepped out of bounds. Once the touchdown signal went up, he couldn’t help but be part of the pandemonium.
“We were speechless,” he said. “Talk about hitting the lottery twice in one night.”
(These photos are courtesy of Tom Theodore)
