Through the first two weeks of the season – both wins at home – the Christian Brothers Academy football team rarely had a chance to relax as those games went down to the fourth quarter.
That wasn’t a problem, though, when the Brothers went up the road to Nottingham Friday night, as a big third quarter blew the game open and CBA bashed the Bulldogs 44-14 to improve its mark to 3-0.
Having established a tough, diverse ground game in those opening wins over Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool, the Brothers showed a bit more diversity against Nottingham.
True, Emmanuel Collins opened the scoring with a 10-yard touchdown run for the only points of the first quarter, but Tyler Hamblin went to the air for his team’s second TD, finding Jack O’Brien in the end zone on a 19-yard pass to make it 14-0.
Nottingham briefly countered with a drive on its own as Marty Clanton capped it with a five-yard scoring pass to Josh Ivey, but CBA quickly restored the margin, driving to the Bulldogs’ five before Cirro Nicoletti-Watson took it home.
Still, a 21-6 halftime lead wasn’t completely safe, so the Brothers went out in the third period and dominated on both sides of the ball, getting 23 unanswered points to settle matters.
Mike Vavonese began the surge, going 33 yards for the longest TD run of his varsity career, and Hamblin returned, on CBA’s next possession to throw a 30-yard scoring pass to Greg Thomson.
A Nottingham mistake deep in its own end led to a safety for the Brothers that made it 38-6, and for an exclamation point Cameron MacPherson stepped in and found Kirby DarDar in the end zone for a 31-yard touchdown pass.
An exciting game is promised next Friday, when CBA returns to Alibrandi Stadium to host Henninger at 6:30. This comes exactly 20 years after current Brothers head coach Joe Casamento, as an assistant at Henninger, led the Black Knights to a no. 1 state ranking at the end of that season. In more recent times, CBA beat Henninger in last year’s Section III Class AA semifinal.
