Drive comes up just short

If this was Hollywood, the script would have played out perfectly for New Hampton senior quarterback Conner Rochford and his teammates.
They would have completed a 98-yard drive, tied the game — or maybe even won it by going for two — and completed a comeback in overtime.
Unfortunately, this game wasn’t in Hollywood. It was contested in Iowa. And sometimes dreams don’t come true.
New Hampton’s epic march took the Chickasaws 92 yards but the Forest City 6-yard-line was as close as the Chickasaws would get in the final moments of the Class 2A postseason game, and the Indians escaped with a 7-0 victory.
“I thought we had it, I really did,” Rochford said. “We finally got going and you could just see our confidence growing every play. It was like, ‘We can actually do this …’”
For a moment, all was quiet.
“I guess it wasn’t meant to be. It just sees like if it could go wrong, it would for us this year.”
New Hampton entered the season with high expectations, but four “one-score losses” by a combined 17 points left the Chickasaws with a 2-6 record when the lights went out on the 2020 season.
— For more on this story, see the Oct. 20 Tribune