CENTRAL NEW YORK – First place in the Class AA football division, and momentum for the rest of the regular season, hinges on Friday night’s game between Christian Brothers Academy and Liverpool at LHS Stadium.
Both teams are 4-0 in the wake of last weekend’s action, which concluded Saturday when the Brothers went to Utica Proctor and smashed past the Raiders 68-12.
Most of the starters for CBA were gone by the third quarter, for good reason. The Brothers had notched 47 unanswered points in the first half on seven different scoring plays.
Brayden Smith got it going with a trio of touchdown passes in the opening minutes, going twice to Daunte Bacheyie on eight and nine-yard strikes and then adding a 12-yard pass to Javon Edenfield.
Isaiah Coleman’s one-yard plunge made it 28-0 going to the second quarter, where Quentin Lewis took over, three times finding the end zone on runs of seven, four and nine yards, in that order.
Smith tacked on a fourth TD pass of 48 yards to Kieghlin Hicks in the third quarter before going to the bench, with Austin Ariola and Gradyn Dixon both finding the end zone in the late stages.
Back on Friday, Liverpool faced Fayetteville-Manlius and, not in any way looking ahead to CBA, the Warriors prevailed 35-14 over the Hornets.
F-M’s defense did a solid job containing Liverpool in the early stages, but that changed in the third quarter when the Warriors, only up 7-0 at the break, rattled off three scoring drives that led to 21 decisive points.
The Hornets did get on the board with a pair of touchdowns, too, both of them with drives punctuated by one-yard plunges from Colin Clark and Jack Hearn.
But Liverpool quarterback John Sindoni threw four touchdown passes to four different players – Christian Washington, Antonio Rivera, Jayden Devereaux and Dax Archer – while Owen Brown had 101 yards on eight carries, one of them going 42 yards for a TD.
Unlike F-M, East Syracuse Minoa was successful earning its first victory of the season, going to Nottingham and working its way past the Bulldogs 42-6.
In all, three local games took place on Saturday, with Jamesville-DeWitt playing Institute of Technology Central on the turf at Nottingham and seeing the Eagles pull away to beat the Red Rams 42-7.
J-D’s lone score came in the second quarter on Anthony Guidone’s nine-yard pass to Carson Kim, which cut an early ITC lead to 14-7, but that was as close as it got, Ryan Brown leading the Eagles by scoring four times.
Bishop Grimes, idle since a Sept. 14 defeat to Tupper Lake (South Lewis forfeited its Sept. 21 game to the Cobras), would get challenged Saturday by Weedsport, but get its first on-field victory of the fall, beating the Wolverines 18-14.
The Cobras gained a 12-0 advantage in the first quarter on two scoring runs from Gary Carter, only to have Weedsport twice find the end zone in response and get a 14-12 advantage going to halftime.
Neither team scored again until the final period, when Kamari McMullin found the end zone to help Grimes retake the lead, having already recorded 12 tackles on the defensive side.
Led by McMullin, the Cobras twice forced the Wolverines to turn it over on down in the late stages and preserve the win, with Dario Nicotra earning 10 tackles and Frank Von Hassel eight tackles, two of them sacks.
