Lawrence gets signature win
Lawrence head football coach Rhandy Audate vowed to give himself some time to enjoy his team’s first win over Andover since 1994, but the coach in him wouldn’t stand for it. “Right after the game, I said that I was going to relax a little bit with my family Saturday night,” Audate said hours after his team stunned Andover, 37-26. “I tried my best to enjoy it, but after a while, I started watching Xaverian film.”
It would be understandable if Audate spent several days basking in the glory of his school’s biggest win in nearly four decades. Lawrence has had its share of struggles on the field -- the last winning season came in 1995 -- and Audate entered his fourth season at the helm with a 5-21 record.
Even with all of that evidence, Audate was adamant the Lancers were very close to turning things around.
“I really thought we were ready last year, then the pandemic came,” Audate said. “Our kids couldn’t work out at all, we weren’t together as a team and it really hurt us. This offseason, we were able to work out as a team and we came back stronger and more physical.”
Lawrence opened the season with wins over Burlington (27-7) and Somerset Berkley (27-6), but everyone knew the true measuring stick of progress would come against a top-10 Andover squad. Ever the optimist, Audate pointed to the 2019 game against the Golden Warriors where his team hung in there for a half (24-14 deficit) before succumbing.
“We talked about it all summer,” Audate said. “We played them tooth-and-nail in the first half of that game and we felt that they were going to have a similar game plan. I like to use boxing analogies, we wanted to be like the 19-year-old version of Mike Tyson and deliver some body shots to set things up.”
Lawrence delivered an early haymaker when Jayden Abreu hooked up with Joenel Figueroa on a 75-yard touchdown pass to take an early 7-0 lead. But where the Lancers showed this wasn’t the same old LHS team came in the second quarter.
Andover appeared to weather the storm when it scored twice in less than 90 seconds to take a 12-7 lead. It would have been understandable if some of the Lawrence faithful may have privately said to themselves “not so fast.”
Not this time.
Lawrence took the body blows and delivered a couple of shots of their own in the final minutes of the half. Abreu and Figueroa hooked up on their second TD pass of the half with 1:55 left, then running back Janiel Herrara connected with Andy Medina on a 35-yard scoring strike with 12 seconds left in the half to give Lawrence a stunning 21-12 lead at the break.
“The first thing we talked about was no letting up, no relaxing with the lead,” Audate said. “This was a boxing match and it was going to be a 12-round fight, there wasn’t going to be any knockouts. Our kids went out in the second half and showed some resilience.”
Holding a slim 21-20 lead entering the final quarter, Lawrence put together a pair of scoring drives and added the 2-point conversions to put the game out of reach.
“It was pretty surreal to be honest,” Audate said. “We gathered together after the game and we talked about how we could do this and we did it.”
Few were happier for Audate outside of Lawrence than Catholic Memorial coach John DiBiaso. He coached Audate during his time at Everett and, while he didn’t know that Audate aspired to join the coaching ranks, DiBiaso said Audate’s character as a person was second to none.
“I’m so happy to see Rhandy doing well,” DiBiaso said. “He is a great kid who comes from a great family. Rhandy and his brothers (Reynaldi and Hautzley) were terrific kids and that was because their parents (Renold and Henriette) did an excellent job with him.”