OLD ORCHARD BEACH – In the crazy, mixed-up world of Campbell Conference football, Friday night’s wild and windy tilt between two playoff contenders was just another night at the office.

But that didn’t stop the Jay Tigers from walking off the soaked Regina Stadium field in disbelief.

Jay’s defense allowed just one first down, and gave that away with an offsides penalty at that, yet still fell a two-point conversion shy of Old Orchard Beach, 8-6.

The win improved Old Orchard to 5-2 and put the Seagulls in sole possession of third place in the conference with two weeks to go. Jay dropped to 4-3 and a share of fourth place.

With a stiff wind from the west diminishing OOB’s desire to throw the ball and a stiff middle of the defense led by Jordan DeMillo, Tyler Dorr and David Farrington dominating the line of scrimmage, Jay limited OOB to nine plays and 15 total yards on three first-half possessions.

But Todd Newton scooped up a fumbled pitch and rambled 60 yards up the right sideline for the Seagulls’ score with 3:02 left in the first half. OOB added the two-point conversion on a pass from Dean Perrone to Brandon Ouellette,

“These are the games that in past years, we found ways to lose,” OOB coach Dean Plante said. “We found a way to win tonight. You win with defense and special teams, and we didn’t turn the ball over and they did. Defensively, I thought we played pretty well tonight.”

“Our kids played great. When you hold a team to one first down, and on a penalty, you’d think you would probably end up on the good end of that,” said Jay coach Mark Bonnevie, whose team outgained OOB, 254-52. “We had some big fumbles, and to Old Orchard’s credit, even though we had all those plays and all that offense, they kept us out of the end zone.”

Four turnovers, two miscues in the punting game (a high snap and blocked punt) and a costly penalty on a two-point try also kept the Tigers out of the end zone. Their lone scoring drive came on the final possession of the first half, when they marched 72 yards in just under three minutes. A 33-yard pass from Austin Clark to Matt Schmidt got them to the 1, where Nick Bourassa ran in it from as the halftime horn sounded.

Bourassa appeared to tie the game by running in the two-point conversion, but Jay was flagged for holding and pushed back to the 13. Clark’s pass into the end zone was picked off by Josh Bouffard.

The key for the Seagulls was bottling up Bourassa, who ran for 110 yards on 31 carries but only had two carries of 10 or more yards.

“Bourassa’s the best player in the league, bar none,” Plante said. “They put the ball in his hand every play and you just wait for him to pop one. But our kids rallied to the ball, hung on and put helmets on him.”

Bouffard picked off another pass midway through the fourth quarter, but Old Orchard still couldn’t move the chains and was punting into the wind. The Tigers’ best chance to take the lead came on their last possession. Runs by Bourassa and Myles Hutchinson got them down to the OOB 27, but Ouellette intercepted a Clark pass over the middle intended for Hutchinson at the 15 with 19.7 seconds left.