Around the CAL Small: Week 4

By Tom Condardo

It was Thanksgiving in September in the CAL Small this week in the non-Lynnfield games as two pairs of holiday rivals squared off in the first of two battles this season. I'll review both of them. Two teams are now tied with the Pioneers for first.

I'll also take another look at the power rankings, but I am going to present it a little differently than what you may be seeing online or in the paper. I'll explain when we get to it. First a look at the standings.



Hamilton-Wenham picked up their first win of the year beating Ipswich in an emotion filled game in Hamilton. By now, you've probably seen the reports that have been all over the local news of the tragedy in Hampton, NH where two bicyclists were struck and killed by a driver without a license. It turns out that one of the individuals who died, Pamela Wells, is the mother of General senior tight end Alex Rogers. The Generals dedicated the game to her and Rogers' family.

H-W scored three first half touchdowns, two by running back Ian Dickey and the other was fittingly a two yard pass to Rogers. The Generals went in up 21-7 at the half. Ipswich closed to 21-14 when Kyle Blomster hit Nate Glaster in the third quarter for the pair's second TD hookup. But Dickey closed it out for the Generals with another TD run in the closing minutes of the game.

Blomster was 14 for 22 for 142 yards for the Tigers as he begins to get more comfortable in new coach Greg Brotherton's spread offense.

On Friday night, H-W heads up to Amesbury while the Tigers host Georgetown.

In another Turkey Day preview, Manchester Essex won their second in a row and pulled into a first place tie with Lynnfield and H-W with their 28-12 win over Georgetown.

The Hornets broke on top early on a Chris Dumont eight yard run to give the home team an 8-0 lead. The Royals made it 8-6 a short time later when quarterback Colby Ingraham broke loose for a 55 yard TD run. Unfortunately for Georgetown, if they didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. On the following kickoff, Ingraham suffered a knee injury and was lost for the game. His return is not known.

M/E took advantage taking a 14-6 halftime lead on a Nate Riehl 30 yard run. They stretched that to 21-6 on 4 yard run by quarterback Craig Carter then put it away with a 32 yard Chris Carr run early in the fourth.

Without their starting QB, the Royal offense sputtered, but in the fourth quarter head coach Paul Sobolewski inserted running back Cooper Martens in at quarterback. That gave the offense some life and Martens scored on a five yard run to account for the final score.

M/E comes to Lynnfield this week with a share of first place on the line.

The Power Rankings
Things are starting to get interesting as far as the playoffs are concerned. Most news outlets are showing the PowerRankings list strictly by each team's rating score, but that is not how the final playoff slots are going to be determined. League standings is the first step in securing a playoff berth, regardless of Power Ranking. So I will be taking that into account in my standings since if the season ended today, this would be the playoff ranking. Let's take a look.



So here's the difference. Based just on the Power Ranking, Winthrop would be 8th and Hamilton Wenham would be 13th. But since they are currently tied for first in their leagues, they jump over Bedford, Triton and North Reading who are now tied for 4th place in their leagues. That's why finishing first or second in the league is crucial. This week we'll pass the halfway mark of the playoff qualifying season, so it should only get more interesting.

As for the Pioneers, they picked up another 3 points thanks to Newburyport's win over North Reading, but they didn't earn any points from Saugus who lost to Masco.

That's it for now. Check back Thursday for my Manchester-Essex game preview.