Watertown’s Ahad, Kennelly full of scouts honor
The Watertown High senior who spent every practice challenging the team’s best players while playing the role of next week’s opponent on the scout team still hadn’t made it into an official game by the eighth contest of the season.
Muhammad Ahad was standing on the sideline, fully dressed, when another senior, captain Jake Matton, sprained his knee on the fourth play of the Raiders’ Division 5 North quarterfinal against Swampscott. Coach John Cacace tried a few players at Matton’s defensive end position, but to no avail.
“I looked to Muhammad and said, ‘Hey, can you do the job?’” Cacace said.
He quickly got his answer. Swampscott was running a lot of stretch plays to the outside, and Ahad, described as “small but speedy,” began shutting them down.
The Raiders’ practice hero, who had earned a sticker on his helmet for being named “Scouty of the Week,” was about to earn a second sticker, this time for his play in a varsity game, the first of his career.
“I came off the bench and made a couple plays,” Ahad remembered of the late-October game. “I went to the sideline after playing defense, and they were all rooting for me. The coaches were really happy.
“I will never forget it.” It’s been that kind of year for Watertown, which landed a No. 6 seed in the Div. 5 North bracket after a 3-4 season in which it had been playing shorthanded. The Raiders were down to 26 kids by the end of the tournament, which they dramatically won with three straight comefrom-behind victories for the school’s first North championship.
How they did it is nothing short of courageous, and it started with Ahad, who played football his freshman and sophomore seasons but chose not to go out for the team in 2016 as a junior.
“I regretted not playing,” he said. “I regretted it from the moment I was returning my pads to my coach.”
But Ahad was convinced by some friends on the team to come back this fall.
When he returned to get a new set of pads, Cacace looked at him and said, “You’re back?”
“I’m not returning these pads again,” Ahad told him.
His goal was to start as a defensive end. But for the majority of the season, he only was used on the scout team.
“I prided myself on giving my starting players the best scout so they could go and win the games,” he said.
“He was really giving everyone a hard time on the practice field,” senior kicker Conor Kennelly said. So, too, was Kennelly. When he wasn’t practicing kicks — he knocks down 60-plus-yard field goals in practice and hit a 51-yarder in a game this season — he also was a member of the scout team as a wide receiver and safety.
But as injuries kept piling up, Kennelly began taking
some third-down reps at wide receiver. In the North tournament, he was getting regular reps. The final few weeks, he started at cornerback, too.
Kennelly had an interception in the Div. 5 North quarterfinal against Swampscott, in which Watertown overcame a 14-point, first-half deficit for a 31-27 victory.
Watertown was down by six with just more than two minutes remaining in the semifinals against Somerville when Kennelly caught the game-tying touchdown pass from junior quarterback Nick McDermott and kicked the game-winning extra point in a 21-20 win.
Down by 10 with less than three minutes remaining in the sectional final, Kennelly executed a successful onside kick that led to a 38-34 comeback win against Lynnfield to give Watertown its first title.
“In my four years, this could be the least amount of kids we’ve had,” Kennelly said. “Injury-wise, if one kid goes down, it takes a lot to step up. We’ve had kids go from nose tackle to defensive end to outside linebacker to inside linebacker. Just moving everyone around. We don’t have enough kids.” But they had the right kids. “What we overcame and how we never gave up — we were the 6 seed,” McDermott said. “Not many people expected us to win any of the games. We proved everyone wrong.”
Watertown, 6-5 overall after losing to undefeated Dennis-Yarmouth in the state semifinal last Friday, has a chance to complete its ninth straight winning season with a victory against Belmont in tomorrow’s Thanksgiving game.
Ahad is expected to see his dream through and might even start at defensive end.
Future Watertown teams “should look on this year’s team and see what it took,” McDermott said. “And how we only had 27 kids on the team, but everybody cared for each other.”