O'Hara Sophomores Give Seniors Nice Going-Away Present

He looked so different. His passes were crisper. His reads were precise. Dashawn Darden knew when to step up in the pocket and he knew when to step out.

The sophomore quarterback made a quantum leap in the last month of the season and Haverford School bore the brunt of that jump in O’Hara’s season-ending 27-17 victory over the Fords Thursday afternoon.

Darden threw two touchdown passes and set up a third with a long completion to another sophomore, Thaddius Smith, as the two connected three times for 91 yards and a touchdown, giving the Fords’ defense problems all afternoon.

With the victory, 's Lion football team finished 6-4 overall, starting nine sophomores, and Haverford School, heavy in senior leadership, closed at 7-4.

“I’m seeing things now I didn’t in the beginning of the year, I was real comfortable by the end of the season,” said Darden, who threw for 283 yards. “I wanted to win this game for the seniors and to build into next year. I gained a lot of confidence by the end of the year.”

So did Smith.

“We executed pretty well, and I have to give credit to my teammates, especially the seniors for helping me along,” Smith said. “I can’t wait for next year to begin.”

O’Hara never trailed. The Lions went out to a 7-0 lead when Darden connected with Smith on a 28-yard touchdown strike. Again Darden was accurate, made a great decision and Smith found an open seam in the Haverford School defense for the score.

Two possessions later, because Haverford School averted early big trouble by stopping the Lions after losing a fumble, the Fords came right back. Fords’ quarterback James Chakey engineered a 12-play, 80-yard drive that ended when the Fords’ quarterback took a keeper into the end zone for a six-yard score, knotting the game at 7-7 with 2:21 left in the opening quarter.

But Darden proved hard to stop again. On the ensuing possession, he stepped up in the pocket and found a breaking Chris Colvin, another O’Hara sophomore, for a 56-yard gain. That set up the Lions’ go-ahead score, when Darden hit Jay Watkins with a 12-yard touchdown pass. O’Hara went up 14-7 and never lost its advantage from there, though the Fords did answer before halftime with a 44-yard Aron Morgan field goal.

The Lions extended their lead to 27-10 scoring on their first two possessions of the second half, but Haverford School managed the scratch back with Chakey four-score early in the fourth quarter, and an onside kick recovery produced another opportunity to close the gap. But a holding call stunted the drive and Shane Johnson’s 10-yard sack pushed the Fords back even further.

From there, O’Hara, guided by Darden, ran out the clock.