FOXBOROUGH — Winning a state championship is never easy, but it can be simple.
It was for Shawsheen Valley Tech on Friday night.
The duo of quarterback Adam Caruso and wide receiver Dyllon Pratt worked like a a charm at Gillette Stadium, combining for 137 yards and two touchdowns, lifting the No. 1 Rams past No. 2 Foxborough, 14-7, to win its second-straight MIAA Division V title.
“I can’t explain how much of a connection we’ve had over this year,” Caruso said. “I had never thrown a ball to him before this year. But since the summer, we’ve just had a connection. It was instant.”
It was essential against Foxborough.
All it took was three plays for the Caruso-Pratt connection to pay off for the Rams. Lined up in the shotgun on Shawsheen’s first drive of the night, Caruso swung a screen pass over to Pratt, who proceeded to carry it 77 yards over, through, and around would-be tacklers for the night’s opening score.
The Warriors couldn’t take down Pratt on the next drive, either.
Catching a ball along the boundary, the senior receiver spun out of a tackle and had nothing but open field in front of him, and took off for 51 yards and his second score of the night.
All week long, the Rams planned to give the ball to Pratt early, knowing the Warriors couldn’t match his breakaway speed on the outside.
“We had that drawn up all week,” said Pratt. “That play, we said we were going to run it, and it felt great to score. I saw the hole, I hit it, and I was gone. They weren’t catching me.”
Although, what was as important as Pratt’s speed, and perhaps even more so, to the execution of those two plays was mental preparation.
“You’ve got to be mentally tough for that moment,” Shawsheen head coach Al Costabile said. “Both of them were, the quarterback and the receiver.”
Down 14-0 early on, the Warriors were stunned. They weren’t exactly sure what had hit them. All they knew was that it came at them fast.
Trying to make up ground as quickly as possible, Foxborough abandoned the tried-and-true, ground-and-pound style of offense that got it to the championship stage and started to air out the ball.
The only problem was that Shawsheen was even more unrelenting on defense as it was on offense.
The Rams held the Warriors to just 116 yards of total offense, and only 87 yards rushing. One of those yards came on a goal line carry by offensive lineman Matthew O’Keefe that got the Warriors on the board in the second quarter, but those were the only points they could muster.
“The defense came up huge time and time again,” Costabile said.
“I can’t express how good our defense is,” Caruso said. “The best in the state, no doubt.”
The victory was the 27th in a row for Shawsheen dating back to a loss against Foxborough in the 2023 Division V semi-finals.
The Rams and Warriors met in last season’s state title game, which Shawsheen won 14-0. One year on, the team came to nearly an identical result.
But the feeling of a second-straight championship felt slightly different than the first for the Rams, with the thrill of victory coming coupled with satisfaction of validation.
“People are going to look at us a little differently,” said Costabile. “They’ll certainly realize last year wasn’t a fluke.
“This is the strongest team I’ve ever coached, and that’s thanks to their hard work and commitment.”
