LEWISTON — A pair of touchdown connections from Oxford Hills’ Eli Soehren to Lewiston’s Eli Bigelow helped the East go into halftime with a double-digit lead Saturday in the 33rd annual Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl Classic.

The West offense woke up in the second half, but East receiver Caden Crocker broke a few tackles and the West’s heart on a late fourth-quarter touchdown catch as the East won 28-23 at Don Roux Field.

Crocker, from Foxcroft Academy, caught a Soehren pass, spun out of two tackles and slipped out of a third for a 41-yard touchdown. Soehren’s extra point then gave the East a 28-16 lead with 2:29 left in the game.

“That was huge. I mean, we’re just trying to get first downs,” East head coach Mark Soehren, of Oxford Hills, said. “Caden is — he is a superstar. And so I’m trying to get him the ball, and we just wanted a first down. And, I mean, I had a great view of it because he was on our sideline, and it was just bumper cars. He was just knocking people down.

“And after that, I’m like, ‘It’s not over, but it’s almost over.’ So it was a huge touchdown, huge run.”

The West drew within 28-23 on Jaelen Jackson’s 20-yard touchdown pass into the back of the end zone to Nick Laughlin followed by Wells kicker Mike Lewinski’s extra point with 28 seconds left.

But Parker Higgins corralled a bouncing onside kick after it hit an East teammate, and Soehren kneeled for the final play to secure the victory.

“It was 50-50, you got West kids going at it, you got East kids going at it,” Higgins, a Lawrence graduate, said. “So, you know, you just got to put your body on the line for that. It’s the last play of the game. It really doesn’t matter what happens to your body at that point, it’s all about recovering the kick.”

Higgins said that the West nearly recovered the kick, which would have given it the ball and a chance at victory.

“Well, the West kid kind of got on it, but I think he miscalculated his dive a little bit,” Higgins said. “So it rolled off his hip, and I was able to get on it. A couple kids diving on top of me, trying to claw me, but not too bad.”

Jackson of South Portland also connected with Cape Elizabeth’s Laughlin less than five minutes into the fourth to make it 21-16.

The exciting finish came after a sleepy third quarter during which neither team scored. The West got the ball first after halftime and drove down to the East 8-yard line, but Jackson’s fourth-down pass to South Portland teammate Nolan Hobbs went out of the back of the end zone. The East had a drive stall out at midfield and the West went three-and-out before the East’s second possession of the half bled into the fourth quarter.

“You know, the second half, I don’t know, and I could be wrong, but sort of my experience tends to be a little bit low-scoring. Coaches make adjustments. And, you know, you’re up a little bit, so you’re a little more conservative,” Mark Soehren, who coached Oxford Hills to its first state championship last fall, said. “The penalties didn’t help us; that was frustrating for us on our side. So I really think that if those penalties hadn’t gone quite the way I thought they should go, I think we would have moved the ball better.”

Lewiston’s Eli Bigelow is congratulated by East teammates after catching a touchdown pass during the first half of Saturday’s Kora Shrine Lobster Bowl Classic at Don Roux Field in Lewiston. Brewster Burns photo

The teams combined for 22 penalties for 200 yards.

ELI TO ELI TWICE

The East had the ball first in the opening period and began a pattern of scoring touchdowns on alternating possessions.

The first and third drives ended with Soehren connecting with Bigelow on fourth downs for touchdown passes. The first score was on a 7-yard fade into the corner.

Soehren’s second TD pass to Bigelow was from 11 yards out in the second quarter. Bigelow out-jumped two defenders and landed a foot inside the back line of the end zone.

“I mean, having guys that I trust is big for the game,” Eli Soehren said. “I mean, I trusted Caden, I trusted Eli. I trusted all my wide receivers this week. We bonded.”

Mark Soehren said that he asked Eli early in training camp what receiving targets he had connected with, and Crocker was his first answer. The former Foxcroft standout finished with six catches for 148 yards.

Eli Soehren capped off the East’s first-half scoring with a 4-yard touchdown run with 42 seconds left.

Soehren was named MVP for the East, and Laughlin earned the same award for the West.

The award is yet another football accolade for Eli Soehren, who won the Fitzpatrick Trophy earlier this year. He also is a two-time Class A Player of the Year and during his career has been named player of the year by the Sun Journal, MaxPreps and Gatorade.

Soehren said the Lobster Bowl MVP doesn’t mean as much to him as playing with old and new teammates. Mark Soehren noted that Eli had some help in winning the award.

“As far as the MVP goes, that’s great. I mean, jeez, the catches Bigelow made — I mean, those guys made them. The run that Crocker made made (Eli) win that MVP,” Mark Soehren said.

Soehren was 20 for 31 passing for 276 yards, and he added 14 runs for 39 yards — though that includes an 8-yard sack and 5-yard loss when he recovered a teammate’s fumble in the air and tried to scramble with the ball.

Laughlin, meanwhile, caught eight passes for 154 yards, ran the ball two times for 17 yards — including converting a fake punt for 7 yards — and was unsuccessful on a running-back pass off of a jet sweep.

“It means a lot,” Laughlin, the Varsity Maine Boys Athlete of the Year, said of being recognized as the West’s MVP. “I mean, it was a great week and it’s for a great cause. And we went out here and played as hard as we could, but we know we all are winners when we raise $250,000.”

All the West’s scoring in the opening two quarters came via the foot of Lewinski, who converted field goals from 40 yards out on the West’s first possession, from 30 yards out to make it 14-6 in the second quarter, and then 37 yards out as time expired in the first half top cut the East’s lead to 21-9.

Lewinski’s third kick was made possible by a 22-yard pass from Scarborough quarterback DeAngelo Alston to Laughlin, who stretched out of bounds with one second left.

“We definitely felt like we were in it,” Laughlin said of the halftime deficit. “We were driving down every series. We focused on more just finishing our drives, not ending up with field goals.”

West head coach Mike Hathaway also credited the East defense for the West field goals.

“We felt like we were moving the ball well, but when we were down in the red zone their defense was good,” Hathaway, of Leavitt, said. “Like, when we got down there, they turned us away and made us kick field goals.

“It really was, you know, we just had a hard time in that end of the field. The space got compressed a little bit, it was a little harder to use our speed, and we just had a hard time. But I thought we moved the ball in the rest of the field pretty well.”

The West outgained the East 499 yards to 337 for the game. The West ran the ball 30 times for 215 yards (including Mountain Valley’s Robert Leveillee carrying it two times for 14 yards) and quarterbacks Jackson and Alston combined to complete 21 of 35 passes for 284 yards.

The East compiled 61 yards on 27 rushes.

Despite going into halftime with a two-score lead, Mark Soehren wasn’t comfortable, especially going against a team coached by Hathaway, who Soehren called a savant.

“We knew, you know, it was 21-9 and it was not enough, for sure,” Soehren said. “And of course, it wasn’t, and it went down to the last second.”