The Freeport High School quarterback was a freshman the last time his football team won — it was a wild, double-overtime homecoming game in 2014 against Mountain Valley. And he was a running back.

In his first game behind center Saturday against Poland, Burke went back to his ground-game roots to deliver a much-needed victory to the program. One comeback, one pass and a lot of time in the trenches led to a 22-8 win for the Falcons.

“This is one of our biggest wins for the program,” Burke said. “We just came off an 0-8 season. Not many people thought we could do it, but we have the heart. We just know we can do it, and we showed them today that we can.”

“There’s so many emotions right now,” Freeport coach Paul St. Pierre said. “Last year was a very difficult year. I’m just so proud of this entire town, the entire team, all these players, all these coaches. This was a win by everybody. There was no one man or one coach that did this. It feels really good.”

It didn’t take Burke long to get on the field in his debut. On the first play of the game, Poland’s (0-1) Austin Bouchard took a handoff and darted 65 yards down the sideline and into the end zone. After a two-point conversion, Freeport (1-0) was in an early hole, and was stuck in it for a while.

Burke’s first 15 plays went nowhere, and the Falcons were on the verge of blowing great field position, after a botched Poland punt, when a crucial block-in-the-back penalty gave Freeport life.

Then, from inside the 10-yard line, two rushes from Burke were capped with a 3-yard score from TJ Morrill. A two-point conversion tied the score.

“It was a real slugfest out there,” St. Pierre said. “We had a strategy coming in, and after a couple plays, we had to throw it out. Josh (Burke), I think he did great holding his composure. We just had to go out there and make some adjustments.”

Burke managed 43 yards rushing on 14 carries. Of his 10 pass attempts, just two were caught, but one of those was huge.

Late in the fourth quarter, after coughing up the ball on the 11-yard line and then quickly forcing a Poland punt, Burke and the Falcons started a drive at midfield.

Stuffed for a 7-yard loss on the first rush, St. Pierre dialed up a pass play that sent Morrill sprinting down the right sideline. Burke lofted it up and Morrill laid out to complete a 33-yard play that put Freeport in the red zone.

Another Poland penalty led to first-and-goal, which Burke quickly turned into a touchdown on a 2-yard scamper.

“We work that play a ton during 7-on-7 passing,” St. Pierre said of the big gain. “We knew we were going to be mostly a running team this year, but we knew we had to throw the ball once in a while. We need to have that connection.”

Stopped cold

Poland found itself down 15-8 with 4:28 left to play. Its next drive was a quick one. It began with another penalty and ended with a game-sealing pick-six. On third-and-long, Knights quarterback Brady Downing was swarmed with pressure and tried to release the ball, but Connor Dostie corralled a deflection and ran it 53 yards down the field. Another extra point from Morrill made the score 22-8, and the game was all but over.

“You know, they made more plays than us. That’s the bottom line,” Poland coach Gene Keene said. “It was knock-down, drag-out. Both teams made some plays, and they made more than us.”

Bouchard, who carried the ball a game-high 19 times, was stuffed three times in the second half, running for just 5 yards on his longest play. Of his 114 total yards, 105 came in the first half. It took Freeport’s defense a few drives to settle in, but when it did, Bouchard was silenced.

“It was probably that first-play jitter,” Burke said. “They only got one big play on us, really. Then we just all got together and our defense is just strong.”

Downing was 5-of-12 for 42 yards through the air with two interceptions. The Knights didn’t run more than five plays on any drive in the second half and turned the ball over on downs twice in the game.

Keene’s only explanation was to “go back to the drawing board.”

Freeport used a stable of running backs in the game, with Cody Vachon matching Morrill’s 38 total yards. The two sides combined for 15 penalties.

Cleaning up those penalties is one of the many things St. Pierre and the Falcons will be working on in practice this week, but Saturday was for congratulations. After Dostie’s pick-six, St. Pierre turned to the Freeport crowd and yelled “This is our first win in two years, let’s go!”

It was an experience he said the coaches, fans, and most importantly the players, needed.

“It’s going to be tough every week,” St. Pierre said. “But the great thing is now, we have confidence going. The experience is everything. Many of these guys just got their first varsity win, so that experience is everything. We’re going to keep building on it.”