ORCHARD PARK — When North All Star’s Kalaughn Ford took the snap late in the fourth quarter, he looked at the hole that opened up in the left side of the offensive line and did not waste the opportunity.
He cut to the left, scurried through the hole and ran the rock in from five yards out to give the North All-Stars a 12-8 lead. He did not stop running when he got in though, the McKinley High School senior kept on running until he launched himself into a group of fans lined up along the fence near the field.
The touchdown run gave the North All-Stars a 12-8 win over the South All-Stars in the 50th annual Kensington Lions All-Star game Wednesday at Orchard Park’s Quaker Stadium.
“I ran it a thousand times last year,” Ford said. “The only thing I seen was just outside, outside didn’t work. I seen the hole, just went up there, get in the endzone. That’s all my job was to do, just get in the endzone.”
The win is the North team’s first win since 2024 and 21st win all-time in the series.
After the first two North drives ended in punts and the team was down 6-0, North head coach Trait Smith made a quarterback switch. He took out Ford and put in Niagara Falls’ Michael Taylor. Taylor took the ball at his team’s 42 yard line and led his team on a five play 59-yard touchdown drive, punctuated by a Colin Miller two-yard touchdown run to tie the game up at six.
Throughout the remainder of the game, the two signal callers split time with Taylor winding up being named the North All-Star’s offensive MVP. While Ford was in the game, Taylor knew he would be back in the game at some point so he stayed ready and locked in for whenever his number was called.
“Just stayed on the sideline, kept throwing the ball back and forth, running up and down the sideline, just staying locked in with my team,” Taylor said. “(I was) making sure everybody got energy. We started putting our heads down when we got flags but I was telling them in the huddle, it’s nothing to put our heads down for, we got more drives to go. We still got more plays.”
The teams traded big energy plays on defense in the fourth quarter with the North All-Stars forcing a fumble on their own one-yard line before the South All-Stars tackled Miller in the endzone for a safety to take an 8-6 lead.
On the ensuing kickoff, North’s kicker fired a missile off the chest of a South return man and the ricocheted was jumped on by North’s Brock Lepsch to give his team the ball back. The Wilson High School linebacker’s play helped kickstart what wound up being the game winning drive.
The kickoff play is one that Smith and his Lockport High School coaching staff installed during practice, from the playbook they run with the Lions.
“We do that with our boys at home in Lockport and we picked the slowest guy in the front line and we kicked right at him,” Smith said. “We tell our kicker to blast him in the chest with it, and the guy looked at us like, ‘what, coach?’ We said, ‘blast him in the chest with the ball.’ And he did it. It worked. That’s a lucky clover leaf in the grass, I guess.”
The 12-8 final scoreline is the lowest scoring Lions All-Star Game since 2017 when the South All Stars won 13-6.