East Lyme — Jax Higgins was headed to the left, then bounced back to the right side of the field, eluding tacklers, for a 59-yard gain in the second quarter on a rain-soaked Thanksgiving morning.

And that’s, perhaps, the moment that the Waterford High School football team was OK again.

Higgins, Waterford’s dynamic quarterback who suffered a high ankle sprain on Nov. 8 when the Lancers were unbeaten at 7-0, returned in Thursday’s 41-7 victory over East Lyme to shift the team’s momentum back in the right direction as it heads to Tuesday’s Class SS quarterfinal game at Bullard-Havens.

Higgins’ 59-yard gain led to a 1-yard touchdown for him on the next play as the Lancers reeled off the final 35 points in the Battle of the Bay, having once trailed the Vikings 7-6.

“You know, that’s just what we do,” Higgins said of the offensive explosion after being down. “We faced adversity all season, We just know how to respond to it. That’s what’s different about this team is we know how to respond to adversity.

“Gabe (Lombardi) got the momentum shift back, the defense gets stops — all the credit to them — the linemen do their job up front and it makes our job easy as skill guys. We play off each other. We feed off each other’s energy and that’s what we do. We never get rattled.

“We just got the job done and momentum into the playoffs is a great thing.”

Waterford, 8-2 after back-to-back losses, had already clinched a playoff bid before the game began.

The Lancers opened the game with a 14-play, 77-yard drive, capped by a 2-yard touchdown run from Omar Hernandez.

Leading 6-0, however, Waterford punted the ball back to East Lyme on its next possession and Jayden Brown returned the line drive to the Waterford 20. East Lyme quarterback Jacob Garro kept twice to put the ball on the 1, resulting in a touchdown for Alexander Buzzelli and a 7-6 Vikings’ lead.

That’s when Lombardi, the Eastern Connecticut Conference 100-meter dash champion during track season, struck for Waterford with a 98-yard kickoff return.

Hernandez scored on Waterford’s next play from scrimmage on a 51-yard run, exploding through the line and making it 20-7, and when East Lyme got the ball back, Lancers’ defensive back Cole Baumgartner pickpocketed a Vikings’ ball carrier and went 45 yards for a touchdown.

Higgins’ 59-yard gain came on the next play from scrimmage and he scored one play later, as Waterford made it 34-7, scoring 28 points in 5 minutes, 51 seconds.

Lombardi scored the final touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter, racing down the left side for 43 yards. The starters played for one more series before Higgins was replaced at quarterback by Lucas Racicot.

“East Lyme’s our rival,” Lombardi said. “We knew we had to come out, compete. Anything can happen in this game for sure. We came out here and we just worked. We knew in practice it was going to be a tough game, but we came out here and we were ready to play. ... We’ve just got athletes out here. We just come out. We know what we’ve got on this team. We know we can win games.”

Higgins finished with 11 carries for 108 yards and a touchdown, while Hernandez had 10 carries for 86 yards and two touchdowns and Lombardi had three carries for 74 yards and a touchdown.

Waterford’s Lombardi and East Lyme’s Greg Paige were named the game’s Palmer Sabilia Award winners as their team’s respective Most Valuable Players. Waterford first selectman Rob Brule presented the trophy for the Battle of the Bay to the Lancers and wound up taking a jubilant selfie with Higgins afterward in the rain.

East Lyme won last year’s game 35-33 on a blocked field goal attempt with three seconds remaining. The Lancers finished 3-7 a year ago.

“Listen, (the seniors’) first year was my first year (as head coach),” Waterford coach Zeth Nolda said. “We sat down in the locker room then and we had a big talk together about what our goals were going to be and what we needed to do to accomplish them.

“It’s easy to talk about it, but these guys actually want to put the work in to do it. Since they were freshmen, we knew this was coming. Once we saw the work we were putting in, we knew we were going to have something.”

Higgins said knowing he could make his come back from injury on Thanksgiving fueled him through his break in action.

“I had a bad taste in my mouth from last year and we came in here got the job done and handled it respectably,” he said. “... It’s all a credit to this team, these coaches. I couldn’t ask for better brothers, brothers for life.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com