One side was coming off a frustrating road loss. The other side was frustrated because it never got a chance to take the field.

Either way, the football teams at Fayetteville-Manlius and Christian Brothers Academy had a lot to unleash on Friday night in their respective Class AA-1 division openers, and both did so in front of appreciative home fans.

In F-M’s home opener, it blitzed Rome Free Academy for 34 first-quarter points and, with seven touchdowns from senior tailback Eric Coley, beat the Black Knights 62-41. Meanwhile, at Alibrandi Stadium, CBA brushed off any possible rust from its unscheduled week off and cruised to a 42-6 victory over those other Black Knights from Henninger.

For F-M, that 24-13 defeat at Nottingham on Sept. 9 hurt because it led early and let that momentum slip away. Against RFA, the Hornets didn’t come close to making that same mistake because it was too busy adding to its gaudy totals, especially in the first 12 minutes.

Coley got it going with a 22-yard touchdown run. Before F-M got the ball again, it expanded the lead to 14-0 when James Rettinger intercepted a Tristian Hunzinger pass and returned it 68 yards for six more points.

Picking apart RFA’s defenses, Coley got two more long runs to the end zone, covering 38 and 36 yards, that made it 27-0, and even after the visitors got on the board, Coley capped off his dazzling first quarter with a 52-yard dash to his fourth TD of the game.

Somehow, RFA weathered this blitz enough to keep the Hornets off the board the rest of the half. Hunzinger, with a pair of scoring passes, cut F-M’s margin to 34-20 by halftime, erasing any possible complacency.

F-M would tack on 21 more points in the third quarter to thwart RFA’s comeback. Coley nabbed his fifth and sixth TD’s of the night on runs of 11 and two yards.

And on a night where he finished with 295 yards on the ground, Coley scored once more in the fourth quarter after James Rettinger joined in the fun, earning a TD on a 15-yard run.

The Hornets are looking forward to its Sept. 30 visit to CBA after visiting Henninger next Friday – with those Black Knights still reeling from its loss to the Brothers.

Having seen its much-anticipated Sept. 10 trip to Buffalo to play St. Francis wasted by a lightning storm that canceled the game, CBA, who was no. 10 in the first state Class AA rankings of the season, was quite glad to see warm sunshine back home – and an 0-2 opponent in Henninger that had just surrendered 58 points to Auburn in its previous outing.

Stevie Scott scored the only touchdown of the first quarter on a seven-yard run, but the game started to get out of hand when CBA’s top defender, Dan Damico, thwarted a Henninger drive early in the second period with an interception that he brought back 80 yards for six points.

By halftime, it was 28-0, Scott having scored a second time from 23 yards out after SirVocea Dennis scrambled six yards for a TD.  Nick Brotzki, taking over as the Brothers’ quarterback in the third quarter, immediately made a big play when he threw 53 yards to Noah Jordan-Williams for the TD.

Still, it was Scott offering the night’s most memorable play in the fourth quarter. Taking a handoff at his own 10, Scott sped past Henninger defenders and was gone to the end zone, accounting for more than half of his 168 yards on a single play.

Now the Brothers’ task, in next Friday’s game at Corcoran (1-2), is not to look ahead to F-M, especially since the Cougars won its AA-1 division opener 28-14 over West Genesee.