Around the CAL Small: Week Six

So this was the last weekend of non-league games for the Pioneers and most of the other teams in the CAL Small as well. The battle for the title begins in earnest this weekend with six of the seven teams in head to head league games.

To bring everyone up to speed on the upcoming battles, I will be doing a special CAL Small League Preview post on Wednesday. Teams have changed since the beginning of the season, and now would be a good time to check back in with each team and handicap the exciting race to come. I have collected some interesting tidbits from other coaches around the league to get their view on how they feel the race will shape up.

But today, let's wrap up Week Six action. First a look at the revised standings.



The game of most interest to Pioneer fans involved Amesbury, Lynnfield's next opponent, who visited CAL Large Pentucket on Saturday. I made the trip to West Newbury and amazingly saw one game in two clearly different parts.

In part one, Amesbury completely dominated the Sachems for just over a quarter. Indian quarterback Tyler Lay sliced and diced the Pentucket secondary, completing eight of 10 passes for 123 yards. Stephan Deas grabbed four passes, Nick Croce had three and Tim Williams had one.

After easily moving through the Pentucket defense from their own 25 to the Sachem 17 on their opening drive, the Indians came up empty when Lay was picked off in the endzone.

No worries. After holding Pentucket to one first down, Amesbury got the ball back and quickly moved from their own 15 to the Sachem 10 where the drive stalled. Croce came in and booted a 27 yard field goal to give the Indians a 3-0 lead.

On the first play of Pentucket's next drive, Amesbury recovered a fumble on the Sachem 25 yard line. After being thrown for a couple of losses, Lay connected with the shifty Deas (think the Patriots' Danny Woodhead) on a 31 yard pass play to the Sachem three yard line. Lay took it in two plays later and Amesbury led 10-0 and was in full control.

However, the dean of CAL coaches Steve Hayden flipped a couple of switches, and that was that for the Indians. From that point on, Amesbury would gain only 26 more total yards and two first downs. Lay would go 0 for 8 with an interception the rest of the way. Amesbury coughed up a fumble and had a bad punt snap for a safety as well.

Pentucket meanwhile, turned into...well...Pentucket. They "winged T" their way over and through the Amesbury defense. The Sachems got on the board on a Mike Doud to Sean Brennan 54 yard pass play which was tipped into Brennan's hands. That cut the lead to 10-7 at the half.

A safety on Amesbury's first possesion of the third period made it 10-9. Then Pentucket converted an Indian fumble on their own 19 into a score late in the third. They added the two point conversion and led 17-10. For the final 13 minutes of the game, Amesbury would run seven plays for 15 yards.

What happened?

According to Pioneer defensive coordinater Greg Haberland who was in attendance, Pentucket started pressuring Lay and that turned things around.

"Pentucket adjusted, started crashing the ends and he threw two picks," Haberland said.

After the game I spoke to Amesbury coach Thom Connors who was obviously dissapointed.

"The first half we played as good as we have all year," Connors said. "Then in the second half we made some big mistakes to let them back in the game.

"The second half they made a pretty good adjustment defensively," Connors went on. "They went from their usual 5-2 look to a 4-4 look. We just didn't make the plays. We're pretty happy with the way we played. Pentucket is a pretty solid football team. We had as easy a chance to win this as we lost it. Overall I'm happy with our effort, we just came up short."

Like Lynnfield, the Indians are 1-0 in the league and now face all CAL Small league games the rest of the way. First up are the Pioneers who travel to Amesbury this Friday night. I'll have a complete preview of the game on Thursday.

The Big Stunner this week occured in Peabody where Georgetown took it to Bishop Fenwick and battered the Crusaders 25-14 to pick up their first win. From all reports, the game wasn't even that close.

Ironically, the Royals moved the game to Bishop Fenwick because of the field conditions in Georgetown, but the Crusaders clearly didn't take advantage of the bonus home field advantage.

The Royals had lost all four of their games by an average of 30 points so this one looked like a mismatch going in. However, someone forgot to tell the fired up Georgetown players. In the second period, Quarterback Tyler Wade ran one in from nine yards out and Derek Depasquale added a three yard burst to give the Royals a 12-0 lead.

That pair hooked up for a 90 yard TD pass play in the third to stretch the lead to 19-0. BF scored to make it 19-6 but then Wade hit fourth quarter field goals of 39 and 40 yards to make it 25-6. The Crusaders added a meaningless fourth quarter score to make it closer than it looked.

According to several reports, the Georgetown line controlled BF all day long and the Crusaders were unable to run against them. Royal coach Matt Bouchard clearly had his team ready to spring the upset. Bouchard told Mike Grenier of the Salem Evening News that his seniors had a meeting on the Monday following the 31-8 loss to Amesbury, and the players responded.

Georgetown will get to flex their newly found muscle against Ipswich on Friday night when the Royals travel North to take on the Tigers.

Ipswich tuned up for that game by manhandling Manchester Essex 23-0 on Friday night in the nor'easter. It was a bad matchup for the Hornets given the conditions with the Tigers primarily a running team and the Hornets a pass-first spread team.

The Tigers smothered the Hornets holding them to less than 40 yards of total offense and posting their first shutout since their 7-0 Super Bowl win in 2006.

Quarterback Brendan Gallagher got the Tigers on the board first with a 35 yard run. Peter Moutevalis blasted in from the one in the second quarter to make it 13-0. Louis Galanis broke a 44 yard TD run in the third to make it 20-0. Kenny Wing added a field goal in the third quarter to account for the final score.

Newburyport had similar problems at World War Memorial Stadium against undefeated Wilmington. Playing in the same weather conditions, quarterback Ryan O'Connor could manage only two passes for 11 yards in the first half.

Meanwhile the Wildcats "ground em up offense" was built for foul weather and they took full advantage. They scored on their opening possession and built a 13-0 first half lead. They broke it open with a field goal on their first touch of the second half and a 38 yard run to make it 23-0 in the third. Wilmington added a fourth quarter TD to account for the final score.

The Clippers have one more game in their CAL Large schedule and it is a doozy. They travel to North Andover, who has been obliterating everyone in their path. After a tough 21-9 loss to Andover in their opener, the Knights have reeled off five straight wins averaging more than 42 points per game.

Hamilton Wenham travels to North Reading this week in what has the makings of a very interesting game. Both teams had bye weeks so they have had two weeks to prepare. The Hornets are looking to rebound from two straight tough losses in games they probably should have won against Austin Prep and Bishop Fenwick. The Generals are coming off a 34-6 loss at Wilmington two weeks ago in a game that was much more competitive than the final score would indicate.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, get onto Fox High School Friday and vote for the Lynnfield/Newburyport contest to be the feature game on October 29. As of 10 pm on Monday night, the lead was down to 56%-44%. Remember you can vote once every 24 hours until the decision is made on Wednesday.

That's it for now. Check back on Wednesday for my CAL Small Preview post.