Newtown Win - My Story: One Team, One Town, One Moment, One Video

Editor's note - Longtime Connecticut sports writer John Nash was one of the few journalists on the Darien side of the field during the thrilling final moments of the Class LL championship football game against Newtown Saturday evening. He also shot a video of the game's final play, a 36-yard touchdown pass as time expired which provided the Nighthawks an incredible 13-7 victory. Coming on the seventh anniversary of the devastating Sandy Hook tragedy, the win took on special meaning for the players, coaches, parents and residents of Newtown. On Sunday, on his daily blog entitled "Project 364," Nash posted a personal account of the moment, as well as his amazing video. They are published here with his permission.

So, I went viral yesterday.

Kind of.

I didn’t go viral personally.

I didn’t slip on ice and slide down a 100-meter hill in front of any cameras.

I didn’t do a funky dance with my belly out to Abba’s former hit song “S.O.S.”

Nor did I sit opposite a white cat or angry lady and come up with a clever saying that made people laugh. Or think. Or weep for humanity.

I just stood on the sideline of a high school football game and watched fate give the world a moment to remember forever.

And, for posterity, I recorded the moment with my iPhone.

Rob Adams, my friend and Project 365/364 co-conspirator over at Exit 55, wrote about the football game yesterday, and mentioned the video, adding, “That's John's story to tell, so I will leave it to him.”

So, this is my story.

As you all know, back on Friday, Dec. 6, I had surgery for a re-torn umbilical hernia.

Monday night, Dave Ruden of The Ruden Report website had texted me asking me if I’d be able to cover one of Saturday’s high school football state championship games for him.

I declined as the only goal in front of me at that point was to walk to the deli to get morning coffee while spending the rest of the week in an oxycodone haze to kill the pain.

Come Thursday, though, Dave reached out again.

I was feeling a lot better and thought walking the sidelines of a high school football game would do me some good—as long as I didn’t get run over by any of the players on a jet sweep to the sidelines.

I told him I was feeling better and I’d be available.

He assigned me the Class LL championship game between top-seeded Newtown and third-seeded Darien at Trumbull High School, which was relatively close to home.

The game would be played on the seventh anniversary of the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which is located in Newtown.

Twenty-six people were killed that day—20 students and six staff members.

It’s a day most of us will never forget, especially us here in Connecticut.

I didn’t have to take photos or do any literal heavy lifting so come Saturday’s 3 p.m. kick-off I was good to go.

It was misty. It was kind of cold.

And around game time I wasn’t feeling that great, to be honest.

My normal in-game routine is to tweet out updates on Twitter, but juggling a clipboard, a notebook and a pen in a giant laundry bag (to keep everything dry) along with a cell phone while focusing on not dropping anything was a little much.

Between quarters, I updated the score via Twitter. Otherwise, the phone stayed in my pocket.

Then, with 3.3 seconds left on what was quite likely the foggiest afternoon of 2019, Newtown had the ball at the Darien-36.

The game was tied 7-7 and overtime appeared imminent.

All the other state championships games have been played and completed, and I remember thinking this 2019 season just doesn’t want to end.

Then it all happened.

I took out my phone, opened the camera app and set it to video mode.

Just in case, you know?

I was standing on the Darien sideline while pretty much everybody else who had a camera pointed at the field was on the Newtown sideline, or deep in the end zone.

I put my glasses on top of my head, so I could focus on the iPhone’s screen, and I recorded the moment that Newtown junior quarterback Jack Street—who was a fourth-grader inside Sandy Hook Elementary when the shooting started seven years ago—took the snap, dropped back in the pocket and lofted a ball toward the Darien sideline.

His teammate, a senior wide receiver named Riley Ward, ran under the ball and caught it, racing into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown with no time left on the clock.

Newtown 13, Darien 7.

It was a great moment—one of the best moments I've personally witnessed in my 35-year history of being a sports journalist—and when I looked back at my video and realized I had caught the action as well as I did, I quickly tweeted it out via my private Twitter account—@nikonnash.

I put the phone into airplane mode, so I could conduct my post-game interviews and quickly lumbered back to my car for the drive home.

When I took my phone off airplane mode, I realized something was up.

You’ve all heard the phrase, “My phone was blowing up.”

Well, my phone was blowing up with notifications as people quickly started sharing the video and retweeting the post.

I live exactly 12 miles from Trumbull High School, and during the entire drive home, my phone kept vibrating next to me.

By the time I got home, settled behind my desk to begin transcribing my notes and writing the story, ESPN had reached out asking permission to use the video.

So did NBC Sports and CBS Sports.

A TV station out of Boston soon did. Albany, too.

Dave sent me a text telling me 50,000 people had already watched the video on my Twitter account.

The game had only ended an hour or so earlier.

I wrote the story—I still don’t think it’s worthy (you can read it here, if you so choose)—filed it to Dave for proof-reading and looked at Twitter again.

More than 200,000 people had watched it and it was still being shared and re-tweeted at a remarkable pace.

I’m not going to lie.

It was nothing more than luck, to be honest; one of those right-place-at-the-right-time moments.

But, I’m glad I was standing in that spot and decided to pull my out my camera “just in case” because magic happened in those 3.3 seconds that makes the world of sports one of the greatest avenues to stroll down on any given day.

I woke up this morning to a handful of texts from friends, saying people had seen my video on a variety of television stations and media outlets.

One that told me it had made ESPN’s Top 10 plays of the day.

I later found out it was the No. 1 play of the day.

As of this writing, it has more than 599,400 views.

By Monday, I figure it’ll hit 600,000.

Hearts were broken seven years and one day ago in Newtown. My own included.

That fact that my video played a tiny part in helping some of those hearts feel special for even just a few moments is both moving and humbling.

A couple of people reached out to me personally to thank me for being at the game and capturing the moment in the fashion I did.

Another person, who was personally touched by the tragedy, also sent me a note that left me a little verklempt.

Yes, I was just doing my job.

But if fate—or 26 angels from above—helped Newtown pull out that emotional win yesterday afternoon, then something greater than myself put me in that spot and made me pull out my iPhone “just in case.”

That’s my story.